Do you mean the way that Microsoft hijacked open-parenthesis, and you can't choose a different character to trigger an emoji call?

https://youtu.be/2PYBj_VhvXg?si=eQogTv825zSyeBvX You can use :

aha - they've added colon.

I notice that ( still goes into emoji mode though.

So, the worst of both worlds. I should not be surprised. (And I am not.)