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Agloves Allow For Touchscreen Use On Cold Days

Zothecula writes "With capacitive the technology of choice on the majority of touchscreen devices hitting the market, people have been coming up with all kinds of interesting ways to interact with their devices when the winter chill sets in and gloves become a necessity. Many South Koreans apparently turned to using sausages as a stylus but if you'd prefer not to be hassled by dogs as you type a text there are less meat product-based solutions, such as the North Face Etip gloves. Now there's another glove-based solution in the form of Agloves, which provide even greater touchscreen friendly surface area for your hands."

26 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Make your own by slifox · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or you can convert an existing pair of gloves into touchscreen-capable gloves by using a needle a little bit of conductive thread:

    http://www.instructables.com/id/Making-A-Glove-Work-With-A-Touch-Screen/

    1. Re:Make your own by EkriirkE · · Score: 2, Informative

      Conductive thread usually is silver.

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    2. Re:Make your own by treeves · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wonder if metallic threads in the gloves will eventually scratch the screens. Would you use steel wool on your touchscreen?

      --
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    3. Re:Make your own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Would you use steel wool on your touchscreen?

      If the screen is glass then sure. Mohs scale of hardness

      Glass harder than steel and much harder than silver.

  2. Sigh by sexconker · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not all touch screens are capacitive.
    We also have good touch screens, which respond to actual touch, by any object.

  3. Harden up by kickme_hax0r · · Score: 2, Funny

    Alternatively, just don't wear gloves. Your body (hopefully) has a lower minimum operational temperature than your touchscreen device.

    1. Re:Harden up by Stregano · · Score: 2, Insightful

      or don't use it outside. if it is so cold that you think you need a special pair of gloves to use your iPad, then maybe you should not be using it at the time and should put it away

      --
      The world is how you make it
    2. Re:Harden up by reason · · Score: 2, Informative

      Nope. My core body temperature, yes, but I've often found myself unable to operate a touchscreen because my finger-tips were too cold. When that happens, I sometimes resort to using my nose.

  4. Migrating ipads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just like the swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, should not the ipad?

  5. plain leather gloves by tverbeek · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have two completely different pairs of generic off-the-shelf leather gloves. They're a bit klutzier than bare fingers - they're gloves, after all - but they both work well enough with my iPhone. I figure it's because skin has similar electrical properties to... skin. Or am I just really lucky that these work somehow?

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  6. Nanook by paiute · · Score: 5, Funny

    When snowblowing, I change selections and volume on my iPod Touch with my nose.

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    1. Re:Nanook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I often find that I accept incoming calls with my tongue. Gross but effective.

    2. Re:Nanook by shikaisi · · Score: 3, Funny

      Please, I beg you that no one tell us about any other warm body extremities that they use to operate their iPhone. This whole thread's going in the wrong direction.

      --
      No left turn unstoned.
  7. Re:and what temperature are they good to? by Joe+Snipe · · Score: 3, Funny

    we dip down as low as -42 degrees. (that's in Celsius, but it's the same temperature as fahrenheit.)

    Actually that was Fahrenheit, you would write Celsius as -42 degrees. It's an easy mistake to make.

    --
    Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
  8. N1 by Jethro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When I use my thin (i.e., down to 40 degrees) gloves, my Nexus One works just fine. I can also use it through plastic bags and clothing, which is a bit weird when you're trying to clean some smudges off the screen with your shirt (and yes, I have a screen protector).

    However, it does get down to -40 around here and nobody makes gloves that'll work on a screen when it's THAT cold. That's more about the gloves being crazy thick/insulating, though. I suppose I could sew some conductive thread through my gloves on my own, but then that'll conduct the cold right into my gloves, too.

    Which is why I wish my phone had SOME physical buttons, say, for ANSWERING and HANGING UP. It's a bit ridiculous to have to take my gloves off to answer a call by swiping across the screen.

    --


    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
    1. Re:N1 by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is yet another reason why I really can't get excited about modern touchscreen phones.

      OK, so it's got a 4.5" display. Awesome.

      Can I use it during the winter? No. The screen/input method doesn't even work during fall weather in most of upper North America.

      Can I use the phone without looking at it? No. I've basically got to look at what I'm inputting, as I'm inputting it, regardless of how good the input method is: there's no tactility. That's great for answering the phone when I've got my glasses off, or when I want to disable the alarm in the morning.

      Unfortunately, all the newer phones seem to be coming out without a slide-out chickpea qwerty board. As crappy as they are, you get used to them, and input can be quite fast. Add that with capacitive screens being crap for anything but the crudest input and the newer, screen-only models being more expensive due to the 'ooo big screen' marketability, and these things have essentially become clumsy feature phones.

      (Hell, newer phones have operating threshold specifications that are so narrow, they're basically designed for indoor use. Why not just use a landline?)

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    2. Re:N1 by jenny1032 · · Score: 2, Informative

      We tested Agloves in a local grocery store freezer at -25Degrees F. They worked like a charm. They work because the silver is knitted throughout the entire glove. This is important because, if your fingers are too dry (because they are too cold) to conduct, usually SOME part of your hand has the moisture barrier to be conductive. That bio-charge moves through the gloves and to your fingertips, so Agloves continue to work in the cold. While they are warm gloves, they are not thick enough to keep you warm in -25 degrees for very long.

  9. Re:and what temperature are they good to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    here in Winnipeg Manitoba: we dip down as low as -42 degrees. (that's in Celsius, but it's the same temperature as fahrenheit.)

    Not exactly. -42 Celsius is -43.6 Fahrenheit. They are the same at -40.

  10. Just avoid Dots Gloves by spetey · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just please don't buy Dots Gloves. I was excited about them, bought them months ago based on their slick marketing, and finally got them delivered a couple weeks ago - they looked nothing like the ads. They were a pair of the cheapest, thinnest wool gloves you can imagine, with some conductive thread clumsily sewn over the very tips of the thumb and first two fingers. Horrible, horrible, horrible - so bad I've been looking for opportunities to give them bad word of mouth for it.

  11. Re:1+ for resistive :) by phyrexianshaw.ca · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At the end of the day it comes down to one reason:

    capacitive screens are brighter.

    Even though resistive screens may be superior in almost every other way: it's hard to sell something you have to look through constantly these days. people like bright, colorful screens: alas.

  12. Re:I have a better idea. by H0p313ss · · Score: 3, Informative

    Man up, and don't wear gloves.

    In the real world day-to-day weather conditions can actually kill you if you're stupid. I strongly suspect you have never walked around in weather so cold that the humidity of your breath freezes your nose hairs and if the wind comes up you have to turn around and hide your face until it dies down.

    Man up here and you die son. You die a fool, not a hero.

    --
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  13. Currently in Alaska, spent the last 8 in ND by Firethorn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am a self admitted Polar Bear. I wear shorts when there's snow on the ground.

    In the middle of winder I will be wearing so many layers it's not even funny. Gloves? I wear mittons because they're warmer.

    When they talk about it being so cold that exposed skin will freeze in less than 5 minutes, they mean it.

    Ability to use the phone even with gloves would help occasionally.

    Oh, and for the operating temperature thing - you keep the phone close to your body to keep it's temperature up.

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    I don't read AC A human right
  14. The Complicator's Gloves...in reverse? by sznupi · · Score: 3, Informative

    ( http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Gloves.aspx )

    Yes, gloves. Many types of them - also fingerless gloves. Easy to make from cheap wool ones - and in this case cutting just the tips of two fingers will be usually enough, making them only slightly less warm.

    --
    One that hath name thou can not otter
    1. Re:The Complicator's Gloves...in reverse? by Yvan256 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just in case someone from Digg is reading this... he meant cutting the tips of the glove fingers, not your own human fingers.

  15. Another score for my N900... by plj · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...in addition to APT, general hackability and real qwerty for fast typing.

    It has resistive touchscreen and thus works well in -10 C, or so, when the gloves are not particularly thick.

    Not that well in -25 C though, as using thick mittens tends to make touch somewhat imprecise. ;) But at least I can use thinner gloves underneath them so that I won't have to take them completely off.

    --
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  16. projected capacitive? by hitmark · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Projected capacitive screens are supposedly able to register fingers even when gloves are worn.

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