Hands on with NuTouch Gloves
iPhone owners who live in cold climates have many solutions for staying warm while using their devices. I've seen gloves with metal dots on their fingers, cutoff gloves with caps that transform into mittens, and gloves with conductive fabric tips designed for use with capacitive screens.
The NuTouch Glove line falls into the latter category. Unlike some of their brothers on the market, all five tips are so enabled, not just the forefinger and thumb. Retailing for about US$12, these gloves are unisex, suitable for use with most business and casual wear.
In the pair I tested, the tips did not pop out visually as much as the product shot at the top of the screen. So it didn't look as if the gloves were anything other than normal outerwear.
The gloves were warm, keeping my hands toasty in sub-freezing weather, but I'd recommend against using them for any sustained, physical hand-centered activity. Like, say, shoveling snow.
My first tests involved biking and I found my hands were pretty much rubbed raw by the end of a half hour. Normally, I have to strip off one of my winter gloves to take calls and to interact with RunMeter -- the app I use to track my rides. The NuTouch gloves let me add ride log data on the go, but were just stiff enough to irritate my skin due to the constant pressure.
This roughness was not a problem during walking, where I wasn't constantly leaning on my hands, moving their positions over handlebars, and sweating through the gloves. They worked especially well for short dashes downtown and walks between buildings where you sometimes need to pull up a map or send a quick text, especially in the cold Colorado winter.
These gloves are a good choice for cold weather touchscreen use -- just remember they're business wear and not meant to be sportswear.
