title: How to insert Emoji (UTF8 4 Byte characters) into MySQL < 5.5
body: <p>I have a website that connects with iPhone and Android users. They sometimes use UTF8MB4 characters (Emoji). When inserting those characters in strings in my MySQL database (formatted UTF8) the data was cropped at the first emoji.</p>
  
  <p>Unfortunately, my hoster is running MySQL 5.1.66 and is not planning to update to a newer version yet. So what is the best solution for temporary use without switching the encoding?</p>