Text emoticons received in plain text

[angels1five]

Hi,
I have a nexus5 running Android 4.4. My partner sends me texts from a Sony Xperia and if he includes smiley faces and emoticons, he sees them as pictures whereas I see them as plain text for example > or

I've tried using different apps for texting (I can't seem to be able to use hangouts because I can only send to contacts who also have it installed and he doesn't) and am currently just using messenger which I downloaded from the Google Play store. I've also tried installing different keyboards and that doesn't work either. I tried Textra this afternoon and still all I see is plain text smileys. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you.

 

[angels1five]

Ha! The examples came out as proper smileys.. (on my laptop)

 

[mikedt]

Some messaging apps decode traditional ASCII smilies into the cute little faces and others don't, and you just see the old skool puctuation characters. And FYI we're not talking about emoji here.

 

[mikedt]

Ha! The examples came out as proper smileys.. (on my laptop)

If you're viewing your post in a browser, or even in Tapatalk, the Xenforo software that AF runs on, is converting them into the cute little yellow faces that you're seeing.

 

[angels1five]

So what would I have to do/install to see the smileys in all their glory?

 

[Hadron]

Try Chomp, Textra's big brother. That certainly translates characters into emoticons on my phone (and I've not installed any emoji packs- that's not my thing )

 

[angels1five]

Hadron, you diamond! That works for most of them. Thank you!