Review: Dots Gloves

review by Bill Palmer

Dear readers, I’ll make you a deal: so long as you don’t ask me to assign an actual star rating this here pair of gloves, I’ll be happy to tell you all about how you can use your iPhone or iPod touch in cold weather while keeping your hands warm.



While those (like me) who live in perennially warm-ish climates rarely if ever face such a scenario, the fact is that the touch-screens on the iPhone and iPod touch can’t be properly operated if your fingertips aren’t bare. And if you live in a place that gets cold enough that you need gloves just to get through the day, using the world’s most straightforward smartphone suddenly becomes very complicated.



A company named Dots thinks it has the solution: instead of removing your gloves every time you need to change playlists or make a phone call, simply affix conductive pads to the tips of the thumb, index, and middle fingers so you can operate the touchscreen while wearing the gloves. And it works. Mostly.



I tend to use the vertical tip of my index finger, so it took some adjustment to the fact that the dots are located on the fingertips (where your fingerprints are). But once I got used to that, tapping the screen was easy. One-finger scrolling took a little more effort but was definitely do-able. Not so much with two-finger pinching, which I never got any good at, no matter which combination of fingers I tried. But those are just my results, and I’m not the most dextrous to begin with. Your mileage may vary.



As I said up front, no star rating because I wouldn’t know how to compare the Dots to normal gloves, as I’ve never before owned a pair of gloves in my life. But they feel comfortable enough, and for what it’s worth, I never once dropped my iPhone during testing. Available in $25, $20, and $15 models (pictured left to right above).

Learn more about the Dots at DotsGloves.com.