Most smartphone accessories are pointless if not completely laughable. A toilet paper holder that doubles as an iPhone dock, a megaphone for your iPhone and thousands of other items that could be justifiably described as crap gadgetry. Hi-Fun's Hi-Call gloves are pointless and laughable, yet also totally awesome. They're the exact opposite of hands-free, but something about them speaks to me.
You see, I grew up watching Inspector Gadget. And when Gadget, a robotic detective, wanted to make a call, he simply held up his hand, spoke into his pinky and listened through his thumb. It was cooler than even Dick Tracy's two-way radio watch. And that's the sort of functionality Hi-Call is promising with these gloves, which are currently in prototype stage.
All the components found in a Bluetooth earpiece are sewn into the gloves. There's a speaker in the thumb to act as an earpiece and a microphone in the pinky finger to pick up what you're saying. Controls for ignoring or answering calls are on the wrist. The whole set-up is wireless until it comes to charging. Then you'll need to charge the mitts by way of a miniUSB port built into the gloves. And, yes, there's capacitive technology, so you can use touch screens with the gloves on. So if you have cold hands and you don't like holding your phone up to your head and you hate headsets and you're cool with looking like a total crazy person, here you go.
The Hi-Call gloves pair with smartphones via Bluetooth, so they should work with just about any handset out there. Hi-Fun is based in Italy and currently sells its products only in Europe, but company spokesman Giulia Grassi told us via email that Hi-Fun, which makes a number of iPod and iPhone accessories, is in the process of looking for a U.S. distributor for the Hi-Calls.
So, for now, my Inspector Gadget hand-talking aspirations will have to be wait.
Via Core77
