Using your BlackBerry while wearing gloves

Winter is a tough time for BlackBerry users. As we bundle up, we lose the ability to effectively use our smartphones. Maybe a scarf doesn’t get in your way, but gloves sure will. It’s particularly frustrating for touchscreen users. Have you ever tried using a BlackBerry 7 smartphone while wearing gloves? If you have, you’d know that it simply doesn’t work. Thankfully, there are some companies that are all over this.

This Christmas my parents, as a gag, got me iPhone gloves. They were normal-looking gloves, only they had silver tips on the thumbs, forefingers, and middle fingers. These silver tips apparently transfer the heat from your fingers to the touchscreen, which is how the screen picks up your movement. Sure enough, I was able to use a touchscreen in relatively normal fashion while using these gloves. There was just one problem. See, the gloves were relatively loose-fitting.

This isn’t a big issue normally, since not all gloves fit snugly around your fingers. This became a problem, though, when I started to type. It was difficult to hit the keys with precision. This was with a 9930, so there were at least physical keys. I can’t imagine typing well at all on a touchscreen keyboard. So while the gloves are a decent idea, they’re not exactly functional. Not even a month later, we saw RIM’s own gag solution.

At CES they handed out BlackBerry gloves. These were nothing special, really: just mittens with the fingers cut out. That’s a decent idea, since it lets you hit the touchscreen and type with a bit more precision. But anyone can cut fingers off mittens. And, really, that kind of defeats the point. If your fingers are exposed, they’re going to be cold.

Also, it looks, well, not so hot. I wouldn’t be caught wearing fingerless gloves in the winter.

Apparently, RIM saw those iPhone gloves I got for Christmas, and they combined their two ideas. As wide selection of iPhone gloves at Amazon.

I wouldn’t recommend the Isotoners, because they don’t fit snugly. The other ones, though? If you have a touchscreen phone, you might as well give them a whirl.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.