We Tested Out Apple's New Animated Emoji — and Holy Sh*t, We're Addicted

While some people are still balking at the new iPhone X's expensive price tag, others have moved on to more important things . . . like emoji. Thanks to the iPhone X's new TrueDepth camera, you can now create animated emoji that match your facial expressions, and send them to your friends and family.

The new feature is called Animoji, and it's far more interesting than we thought based on the leaks that came out the weekend before the event. It all starts with the iPhone X's TrueDepth camera, which is made up of a dot projector, an infrared camera, and a flood illuminator. With these three features, the front-facing camera can "accurately map and recognize a face." Utilizing the Animoji technology and TrueDepth camera, Apple was able to use more than "50 different facial muscle movements" to create the fun animated emoji based off your face.

I got to test out the new feature at a press preview event on Sept. 12, and it was pretty remarkable to see how quickly it picked up on everything my face did. If I moved my eyebrows, the rabbit emoji would move its eyebrows along with me. If I started talking to the person next to me, the emoji mouth would move too. It felt like something you might see on a Pixar movie set in 2060, but here we are.

The best part about Animoji, however, is that anyone can use it on the iPhone. Unlike Face ID, which will only work with the face it was registered with in order to provide extra security, Animoji can mold itself to any user's face. So, even if you're the only one with an iPhone X, your friends and family get to have fun, too.

Animoji will be preinstalled on the iPhone X and lives in the iMessage app. You can use it on about a dozen different emoji, like the unicorn, fox, rabbit, alien, pile of poo, chicken, and panda. See photos and GIFs of it ahead . . . and get ready to see emoji in a whole new (and downright awesome) way.