Android on my Galaxy Nexus is able to interpret iPhone emoticons, how can I send them back?

Question

Recently I notice that my Galaxy Nexus (Verizon 4.1.1) was able to translate the iphone 4 emoticons for my Android phone as seen here:

Which is great. However the only way I can send them back is if I know the code for them or if I copy and paste one that I have already received.

Is there any App or Addon that gives me a full menu of the icons to insert into the message?

Answer 1

Android Jelly Bean has extended Emoji support. There are various possibilities to type emoji by yourself:

1. Install an emoji keyboard and enable the Language switch button on your default keyboard, to fast switch to the emoji keyboard. For example: New Emoji Keyboard
2. Use a messaging app which has in-app emoji support (obsolete since Android 4.x+ supports it by default), like WhatsApp or HandCent SMS or other 3rd party SMS replacements
3. You can enable basic emoji on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean: Simply go into Settings > Language & input > Android keyboard (settings) > Add-on dictionaries > Emoji for English words. You may have to go back into Add-on dictionaries, click refresh and install again. Now, whenever you type out one of the emoji keywords in the regular Android keyboard, you should see an auto-complete suggestion for an emoji icon. (This is for AOSP Android, it may not work on custom roms or Samsung/HTC/LG/Sony etc)
4. If your rom doesn't support the above possibilities, then maybe obtain root and install Emoji Font Updater (root) to get natively supported emojis, but yeah you already have native Emoji support as I understand from your question so this is mainly obsolete and I just write it if other readers wanna try :)

emoji keywords: Up, Down, Left, Right, Star, Smile, Voltage, Warning, Victory, Wheelchair, Five-eighths, Seven-eighths, Liter, Soccer, Woman, Man, Telephone, Phone, Flat, Sharp, Note, Multiplication, Plus, Minus, Divide, snowflake, flower, question, exclamation, circle, paper, rock, scissors, arrow, baseball, soccer, golf, fahrenheit, celsius, degree, aries, taurus, gemini, cancer, leo, virgo, libra, scorpius, sagittarius, capricorn, aquarius, pisces, phone, telephone, airplane, sailboat, aleph, king, queen, bishop, knight, rook, pawn, church, temple, differential, plus, minus, multiplication, divide, trademark, male, female, five-eighths, seven-eighths, one-thirds, two-thirds, happy, heart, star, hourglass, infinity, integral, reference, sharp, flat, wheelchair, warning, voltage, victory

Answer 2

I believe Handcent SMS has the ability to allow a user to choose between the Emoji style of iOS5 / iOS6 and Android. There is an additional Emoji plugin that one would need to install in order to get this functionality.