title: What is the difference between utf8mb4 and utf8 charsets in MySQL?
body: <p>What is the difference between <code>utf8mb4</code> and <code>utf8</code> charsets in <em>MySQL</em>?</p>
  
  <p>I already know about <em>ASCII</em>, <em>UTF-8</em>, <em>UTF-16</em> and <em>UTF-32</em> encodings;
  but I'm curious to know whats the difference of <code>utf8mb4</code> group of encodings with other encoding types defined in <em>MySQL Server</em>.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Are there any special benefits/proposes of using <code>utf8mb4</code> rather than <code>utf8</code>?</strong></p>