Tag: Gloves »

Living in a cold place sucks for touchscreen use; trust me. These Glove.ly gloves offer an entire hands worth of touchscreen joy in a one-size-fits all design that seems much classier than the typical eGlove.

What more, most "touch" gloves have these terrible, ugly, bulky silver pads on your fingers. They don't work well, and if you use any other part of your hand they don't work at all. Glove.ly is delicately woven with real silver threading, as part of the design, which allows you to use your touch-screen phone with your whole hand, rather than just the tips. You don't have to relearn how to hold or type on your phone.

Winter is coming. Well, that's what the news reports say anyway - being here in south Texas, I haven't had to wear a jacket at all yet. But I was in Chicago last January, during sub-freezing temperatures. I had to wear gloves! Now, the problem is that wearing gloves makes it hard to use the capacative screens that the iPhone and most other touchscreen devices boast. Whenever I wanted to take a picture or check my phone, I had to take off my gloves, and risk my hands suffering instant frostbite, because I have lived in Texas my whole life and am not even used to snow, much less the 10-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures I experienced the day I was out and about downtown Chicago. Well, not using my phone was not an option! If only I had some sort of way to use my phone with my gloves!

I am not alone in my problem. South Koreans used sausages, and conductive gloves do exist. But what if I have a pair of gloves that I really like, and want to use my phone with? Is there not a compromise that exists? Oh, but there is! Meet a handy little accessory called Digits.

Digits consists of 4 dots that attach to any normal pair of gloves, and serve as conductive pins. By putting them on the thumbs and index fingers of a pair of gloves, they can allow any pair of gloves to control a capacitive touchscreen device. How wonderful! Now, texts and emails can actually be sent while the temperature outside feels like some kind of negative number! Or, enjoy the Avalanche mode of Super QuickHook while in an actual avalanche! (Disclaimer: 148Apps is not responsible for the safety of anyone who attempts to use their touchscreen device during an avalanche)

Digits are available now in a pack of 4 for $11.99. They are available from Quirky's website, or from outlets like ThinkGeek. While they might not be of much use in areas that consider snow to be nothing but a wild fairy tale, in colder climates, these may be extremely useful for those who can't bear to keep their phones in their pockets at any point!

It's starting to get chilly in a lot of places and that means that folks will likely begin donning gloves to keep their digits warm. Unfortunately, if you're an iOS user it can be rather difficult to utilize your mobile device in blustery conditions, as the iPhone's touch screen doesn't play all that nice with gloves. That problem may soon be solved though, as rumor has it Apple is reworking the screen on the iPhone 5 so it's more glove-friendly.

Hitachi Displays has created a new projection-type touch panel akin to what the iPhone already uses which has no problem playing nicely with gloves or even a plastic-tipped stylus. Basically, the screen is able to read a touch even through insulators such as cloth, allowing the screen to react even though it isn't receiving direct finger contact. In another practical application, the screen also works when touched with a fingernail, eliminating the annoyance of not having your iPhone register your taps simply because your nails are getting in the way.

Just because the tech exists doesn't mean Apple is guaranteed to use it, but there's little reason to suspect they won't. Considering current iPhones only work with one specific type of Apple-approved glove the company would likely be very happy to expand functionality and ease the burden on consumers. Furthermore, considering Apple is often the company leading the charge on capacitive touch screens, they're always interested in any major breakthroughs.

The only thing we don't yet know is how thick a glove users can wear and have this new screen still function properly. While very thin gloves seem to work just fine, we still have questions about the heavy-duty snow gloves that are ideal for harsher climes. Of course, the folks who live in places where thick gloves are acceptable are often so adapted to the cold they don't wear gloves at all, but that's mainly because the pain receptors in their brain are frozen solid so they don't even realize their fingers could snap off if they even try using their iPhone while outside.

[via PatentlyApple]