css - Emojis won't scale beyond 16px font-size on IOS 7

Question

We're making an app in phonegap using web-pages in the UIWebView, and in this product we allow apple's emojis, which we apply the AppleColorEmoji font to, making it possible to scale them.

After updating to IOS 7 on both iPad and iPhone, the emoji with font AppleColorEmoji that previously allowed for scaling to whichever size wanted, no longer scales beyond 16px font-size (it can scale smaller). It still scales as intended on the devices with IOS <7

I fear this is something they introduced in IOS 7 intentionally. Have anyone else experienced this problem, and perhaps even a solution to it?

Answer 1

If in desperation, in Webkit, one can scale such emoji character in a HTML element to whatever size one wants.

<span style="-webkit-transform: scale(5); position: absolute;">&#x1f47f;</span>

Minor inconveniences with the voodoo presented above is that the positioning will need adjusting for the size, since the transform has to be applied to elements with position absolute. Pixelation could also be slightly annoying, if the emoji is transformed too large.