By Mark Milian, CNN
(CNN) - The U.S. Army has been working for about two years on outfitting its soldiers with smartphones, but one obstacle to this technological upgrade likely will be familiar to anybody who has tried to operate a touchscreen phone in the winter:Smartphones and gloves do not get along.
Rather than putting government money toward developing a new type of glove, the Army went on a little shopping spree. If the government is coming late to smartphones, and buying those from stores instead of building them, then surely someone must have solved this problem.
They aren't mainstream yet, but several companies indeed sell gloves that let the wearer operate a touchscreen without taking them off. And as more people discover the limits of their Android companions on a snowy day, these types of gloves could take off.
The Army and Air Force have landed on one brand in particular: Agloves. The little-known Colorado company is up against giant brands, including North Face, and more than half a dozen other scrappy upstarts, like Dots, Echo Touch, Freehands, Power Stretch, Tavo and TouchTec.
Yet, Agloves gets the top endorsement from the Army, where a shoddy glove doesn't mean a missed call but perhaps a lost life. The Army's Fort Bliss outpost in Texas tested several models of gloves promising smartphone compatibility as part of its mobility program. Evaluators favored Agloves, and the Army has sent many pairs of them overseas to fighters.
"These technologies coming out of small companies are literally game-changers," Michael McCarthy, a technology director for the Army, said in a phone interview.
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