Full emoji support was implemented in KitKat. It’s clear that not every device, even with a proper hardware configuration, received an update to this OS. Thus, emoji has been impossible for many to use fully.

Luckily, the community can find a solution for almost everything, and we have seen it so many times through the years. The same applies to emoji on Jelly Bean ROMs. Thanks to XDA Recognized Developer niaboc79, users can send emoji smileys on Sony devices with Android 4.1.2 and newer. To make this possible, the famous APKTool and a bit of Smali editing is required.

To apply the changes, you need to decompile the Xperia Keyboard and add a few lines of Smali code that has been provided by niaboc79. The whole process shouldn’t take you too long and you should be able to use your modified keyboard back in just few minutes. In order to make it work, your device must be rooted, otherwise you won’t be able to push the keyboard back to /system partition.

You can find the guide by visiting the How to add Emoji support to Xperia Keyboards thread. Described method should work with majority of currently available Sony Xperia phones, so don’t hesitate to give this method a shot if you own one of those.