Little do most of you know that Samsung offers its own take on Gboard's popular Emoji Kitchen feature. Just like the emoticon mash-up option from Google, the Samsung Keyboard has something called emoji pairs or Combined Emoji. In essence, the two are very similar. You choose two emojis from either keyboard and it will combine them to create a brand new emoji of your own making. There are some differences here and there, and that's what we'll look at now.
Samsung Combined Emoji vs. Google Emoji Kitchen
Why you can trust Android Central Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Using both emoji mash-up features is really simple. All you've got to do on either Android keyboard is select a pair of emojis and mix them up. Where Google's Emoji Kitchen produces still results that are shared in the PNG image format, the Samsung Keyboard allows you to do a bit more with your creations.
To use emoji pairs on a Samsung Galaxy phone, you head to the Samsung Keyboard as usual. After choosing two fun emoticons, you get to pick an animation style that you like and produce a moving Combined Emoji. Naturally, this looks far more engaging and adds a spark of excitement to your conversations as opposed to the motionless Gboard emoji mash-ups.
However, it's not time for Google to throw in the towel yet. The Samsung Keyboard has long been the source of many complaints from its users. In fact, the input method is so disliked that many choose to change the terrible keyboard on their Galaxy phones as soon as they get them. It is riddled with bugs and software issues that make it the opposite of the ideal Android keyboard.
On the other hand, Gboard is the ultimate keyboard for Android thanks to its hoard of nifty features and its snappy performance. Google also rolls out Gboard updates and refreshes its emoji concoctions far more regularly than Samsung.
On top of that — and this is a very serious point in regards to aesthetics — Samsung's emojis are nowhere near as attractive as the ones from Google. One might even call them downright ugly, especially in comparison to the best Gboard emoji mashups. Sure, they move, which is interesting, but the glossy cartoon-ish look just doesn't appeal to the wider masses next to the cutesy, minimalist emojis from Google.
No matter how many fancy animations are added by Samsung to its Combined Emoji, it still won't be able to compete with the Google Emoji Kitchen. At least not until the emoticons get a major makeover and the software issues have been ironed out of the Samsung Keyboard.
Google's Emoji Kitchen is a fabulous, fun, and exciting way of creating expressive emojis to spice up conversations. In addition to that, Gboard offers some handy tools built-in such as a clipboard, Google Translate, and several input methods.
The Samsung Keyboard is lackluster at best. You can create dynamic emoji pairs, but they just don't look as nice as the ones from Google. It has gotten a little better over time, but there's more work to be done for this keyboard to compete with Gboard's features.
