Emoticons problem

I have an iPhone 4s (ios 5.1.1) and i added the Emoji keyboard and it works fine.

but now after a while my friends send me txt messages that have emoticons,

that i cant type anywhere (but i can see them as emoticons and not as boxes).

I went on a website that had a list with a whole buch of emoticons and i could copy

and paste them into notes and I'm able to see about 80% of them but i can only type 30% of

them. Does anyone know where the problem is?

I looked trough a lot of other discussions but i couldnt find a solution to my problem. 😟

thanks, kitemafia.