As I mentioned in my previous post on smartphone-compatible gloves, I had ordered one of the new iPhone Glove by Dots Gloves which was backordered for a couple of weeks. Surprisingly it showed up quicker than I was expecting so I got to try it out for the past two weeks in this wonderful NYC winter weather. =p
This new lambswool style feels a bit thicker and stiffer than the old knit version that I previously had. Might soften up after age and more frequent use. Something I noticed immediately was that it felt snugger in the fingers than before. Also, there seemed to be a good amount of extraneous thread and knit inside that my fingers would keep getting snagged on when putting them on. So I turned them inside out to check it out.
What you're seeing in the photo above is the point where the palm and fingers connect. Not having owned wool gloves before, I'm not sure if this is normal with them or not but you can see the one big red loop in the center and two smaller silver loops to each side. And if you look closely you can see two thin red threads running horizontally across along the top underneath the loops. These were what my fingers were encountering whenever I put the gloves on. I wound up yanking the thin red threads out but left the loops all in. Overall it seems like rather shoddy handiwork to me but as I said, I have no other similar gloves to compare them with. Plus, once you get past this, it doesn't affect the overall utility of these gloves.
So, how do these gloves work? Basically the same premise as the Agloves. Silver coated fibers act as conductors between your flesh and the touchscreen. The difference here is that they only weave these fibers in to 3 fingers on each hand (thumb, index, middle) instead of throughout the glove as with the Agloves. As can be seen in the photo above, the silver threads seem kind of sparse compared to the Agloves but they work all the same. Because it's a much thicker glove though, response time seems to be a bit slower and precision takes a hit as well. Still able to work with a touchscreen quicker than the old metal dot version though but not as nimble as with the Agloves.
The one advantage that it has over its predecessor and the Agloves is that it's quite warm. Provides excellent protection against the cold. So when it hit sub-30 degree (Fahrenheit) temps here, these are the gloves I pull out first. So, as predicted, these new Dots Gloves have replaced the old ones as my go-to really cold weather gloves. The Agloves is still champs when it comes to responsiveness and precision but these new Dots Gloves are a good compromise between cold protection and utility.
