Glove story

How easily is technology rendered useless? Put on a pair of gloves, for instance, and bang goes the possibility of using your iPhone. But Ian Macrae's got his hands on (or in) something that claims to change all that

It’s said that you learn something new every day. For instance, I recently discovered that ecru is “The light fawn colour of unbleached linen” as defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

The word came to my attention from information which hit my desk about some new gloves on the market.

And that wasn’t the only thing that interested me. Trust me, my life is not so sad that my excitement is stirred by the prospect of a new pair of gloves.

But the sample gloves arrived at just about the same time as the recent cold snap, and just as I was starting to get fed up of removing and replacing gloves in order to operate my iPhone’s touch screen in the great outdoors.

These Etre Fivepoint gloves have what are known as “Conductive fingertips”. That means that it’s possible to operate touch screen equipment such as cameras, iPods, iPhones or iPads while still wearing them.

And I bet you’re agog to know how they can do this while ordinary gloves can’t.
According to the promotional material on the website, it’s to do with capacitive material – knew you’d be fascinated – and the fact that ordinary gloves don’t conduct electricity while the Fivepoint gloves, and indeed our fingers do.

Enough of the theory, how about the practice? With the weather having been how it has and what with me having a pretty text active family, I’ve had plenty of chance to try them.

The first thing to say is, as they’re made of 98% lamb’s wool, they certainly keep your hands toasty right to the conductive tips of their and your fingers. This is a boon if, like me, you’ve previously relied on fingerless gloves to retain your sense of touch in the cold, which are marvellous at keeping your palms nice and snug while your fingers drop off from frost bite.

Performance wise – though it seems odd to be judging gloves on their performance, there’s no question that it is possible to operate the touch screen while wearing the gloves. However, be sure to buy the right size for you as flapping fingertips are likely to have an impact on accuracy, particularly when using the text input keypads.

Similarly, the seam at the end of each finger can reduce accuracy and result in more mistakes than usual being made.

Marks out of five? I’d have to say three and a half. They’re very good at keeping your hands warm and dry, they do allow you to operate your touch screen device, but be prepared to accept the frustration that can come from a loss of accuracy.