Emoji is the Japanese term for the pictographic characters or emoticons used in Japanese SMS messages and webpages. With firmware version 2.2, the iPhone gained support for entering and displaying emoji, supposedly only for Japanese users, but it turns out there are many ways to get around that, even on a non-jailbroken phone. But Apple’s begun cracking down on emoji-enabling apps.

Apps that only enable emoji are now banned from the store. For example, Emotifun and iEmoji have both vanished from the App Store. Apps that have other functionality are being required to remove the emoji-enabling portion of their apps.

For example, Spell Number (free!), which has an Easter Egg that enables emoji. Its developer says:

Per request by Apple, the easter egg will be removed very soon, download the current version (1.03) as soon as you can.

Spell Number is free, so if you want emoji, download it now. Here’s the Easter Egg:

Enter the number 9876543.21. That sets the desired setting to enable emoji. Quit the application, go into settings, select General > International > Keyboards > Japanese, and switch on “Emoji.”

Since this is a preference, once you enable it on your iPhone, it will be there forever, even after a FW upgrade, assuming, of course, you have allowed your iPhone to back up. The preferences file that has been affected is part of the iPhone’s normal backup. Once set, the option remains set.

Thing is, you can’t really blame Apple too much for this; it’s quite possible they don’t have a licensing agreement for emoji to be used on non-Softbank phones.

I’ve included a video below that shows the procedure: