iOS 6.0 was the first release of Apple's emoji font that displayed Unicode 6.0 emojis on the iOS emoji keyboard. Many characters previously thought to be new in iOS 6.0 were available in iOS 5.1, but not shown on the emoji keyboard. 

A number of changes were made to emoji images in this release including the gavel being changed to display a hammer and the orange book being fixed to display as orange instead of purple.

Emojis in this release are compatible with Macs running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.