Echo Touch conductive gloves let you use touchscreen phones
Answering your smart phone will be much easier this winter thanks to the Echo Touch Gloves -- stylish hand-huggers that feature touchscreen-friendly forefingers and thumbs.
We hate to break it to you, but chilly weather is just around the corner. And, as sausauge-wielding South Koreans will tell you, touchscreen phones such as the iPhone won't respond if you're wearing gloves.
Luckily, we've just been sent a pair of Echo Touch gloves, which have pads on the forefinger and thumb that work with capacitive touchscreens. The pads are made of unobtrusive conductive fabric, so your pokes are transmitted to the phone's screen. We've tested them with our trusty iPhone 4, and the gloves work a treat.
Having padded fingers will obviously put a crimp on rapid-fire gaming and selecting tiny bits of text, but the conductivity worked perfectly in our tests for using the phone normally.
They're also as cute as a kitten playing a tiny ukulele, especially the ruffled wool pair we're modelling here. Despite the all-conquering trend for dorky glasses, fashion and nerdiness rarely come together, so the Echo Touch gloves are a welcome treat for the fashionable geek.
The gloves also come in other styles -- you can check them out at the Echo website, although it doesn't ship to the UK. We also don't get the men's versions here, although the ones we're really pining for are the cashmere gloves.
In the UK, you'll have to buy the Echo Touch gloves the old-fashioned way, at John Lewis, Fenwicks and the V&A Museum shop, and we think they're fair at £25 a pair.