some emojis not showing on old android skd/api's

(also check out how i show country flags for androids, instead of huge letters, where should be emoji flags Android regional indicator symbols)

Easy fix. For example i need men/woman 🚺🚹.

Lol they show as <?> here, heres the image:

But on lower sdks they show up as a unknown symbol.

The general idea is to get the char codes behind these symbols, and if the string contains them, then put a image from the raw folder in place of the emoji in a spannable string.

You can get emoji images from emojipedia http://emojipedia.org/mens-symbol/

In a string these characters come in a format of two characters:
man symbol - '\uD83D','\uDEB9'
woman symbol - '\uD83D','\uDEBA'


So, i cycle through string with a for loop and check if charAt(i) == '\uD83D' and if next char is '\uDEB9' or '\uDEBA' then continue with the image stuff. Btw on newer java sdk you can use a String/char in a switch:

 SpannableString ss = new SpannableString(input);  
 if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) {  
   int ssl = ss.length();
   for (int i = 0; i < ssl; i++){  
     char c = ss.charAt(i);  
     if (c == '\uD83D' && i < ssl - 1){  
       char next = ss.charAt(i + 1);  
       float k = 1f;  
       switch (next){  
         case '\uDEB9'://man emoji
           Bitmap man = getBitmapFromRaw("man", context);  
           if (man != null) {  
             Drawable d = new BitmapDrawable(context.getResources(), man);
             float scale = context.getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density * k;
             float w = d.getIntrinsicWidth() / scale;
             float h = d.getIntrinsicHeight() / scale;
             d.setBounds(0, 0, (int) w, (int) h);
             ImageSpan is = new ImageSpan(d, ImageSpan.ALIGN_BASELINE);
             ss.setSpan(is, i, i + 2, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);          }  
           break;  
         case '\uDEBA'://woman emoji
           Bitmap woman = getBitmapFromRaw("woman", context);  
           if (woman != null) {  
             Drawable d = new BitmapDrawable(context.getResources(), woman);
             float scale = context.getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density * k;
             float w = d.getIntrinsicWidth() / scale;
             float h = d.getIntrinsicHeight() / scale;
             d.setBounds(0, 0, (int) w, (int) h);
             ImageSpan is = new ImageSpan(d, ImageSpan.ALIGN_BASELINE);
             ss.setSpan(is, i, i + 2, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);          }  
           break;  
         default: break;      }  
     }  
   }  
 }  

The getBitmapFromRaw method:

   public static Bitmap getBitmapFromRaw(String filename, Context context) {  
     return getBitmapFromRaw(filename, context, false);  
   }  
   public static Bitmap getBitmapFromRaw(String filename, Context context, boolean reduceQuality) {  
     int identifier = context.getResources().getIdentifier(filename, "raw", context.getPackageName());  
     Bitmap bmp = null;  
     if (identifier != 0) {  
       InputStream is = context.getResources().openRawResource(identifier);  
       BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(is);  
       BitmapFactory.Options options = null;  
       if (reduceQuality) {  
         options = new BitmapFactory.Options();  
         options.inSampleSize = 2;  
         options.inPreferredConfig = Bitmap.Config.RGB_565;  
       }  
       bmp = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(bis, null, options);  
     }  
     return bmp;  
   }