Last winter, enterprising South Koreans reportedly found a low-tech answer to a first world problem: To avoid operating cell-phone touchscreens without gloves in freezing weather, they used mini sausages as finger surrogates. Whether or not you choose to believe that people were actually using the so-called meat stylus, it did make the news in Japan.
A year later, alas, sausages are not flying off the shelves, but Japanese retailers obviously did read the hand signals for help. This winter, as sales of smartphones in Japan topped 3.8 million units for 2010, local stores are stocking special gloves with conductive fingertips that let people to keep their digits warm and still operate phone and tablet touchscreens.
The current range of touchscreen gloves at Seibu Loft and Tokyu Hands is impressive, with prices ranging from about ¥1,000 to ¥5,000.The E-Touch gloves (not to be confused with the similar iTouch gloves) are also knit gloves, but have gripping material at the palms for hanging onto to those extra slippery devices. Echo Touch gloves, imported from New York, are at the higher end of the price spectrum. Made from a fleecy wool blend, they feature panels of "eLink" fabric at the fingertips.