As a phone, WP8 looks to be knocking it out of the park...games though...my biggest frustration seems to remain lack of consistent achievements/leaderboards and lack of universal apps with Windows 8 (even just buy once play on both would appease me), me giving them feedback about this is much less effective than someone like a journalist grabbing a manager and shaking sense into them.
Those are the same emoji as Windows 8 uses, I know the people who work on that feature - they are in Japan believe it or not. Emoji on phones is harder than you can imagine to make work right because of the way all the different carriers in Japan use different mapping systems especially with legacy phones.