How to increase touch sensitivity on the Galaxy S5 to use it with gloves

No matter the weather, you won't have to choose between using your phone and having cold fingers.

You won't always need to make use of your phone while wearing gloves, but when the temperatures dip the last thing you want to do is expose your extremities to the elements to send a tweet. With the latest enhancements in touchscreen technology phones can now be sensitive enough to be used with gloves, and the Galaxy S5 is no exception. 

The ability to poke around your new phone while keeping your fingers warm isn't turned on by default, but it's simple enough to turn on if you need the feature. Read along and see how you can turn on the increased screen sensitivity mode on your Galaxy S5, and keep your fingers warm in the process.

The setting we'll be looking to enable here is called "Increase touch sensitivity," and there are two simple ways to turn it on. The first is just a quick dive into the notification pane away. Swipe down the notification pane and tap the button in the top right corner of the screen to expand out all 20 of the quick settings. By default you'll see a button called "Touch sensitivity" in the bottom leftmost corner. Tap the button, and the feature is now enabled.

This is really just a shortcut to a toggle in the Settings menu, though, and if you've chosen to modify your notification pane shortcuts, you may have inadvertently removed the Touch sensitivity button from view. No matter what, you can always head into the settings of your phone and enable it manually. Go into the Settings, scroll down to Display and then look for "Increase touch sensitivity" at the bottom of the Display submenu. Check the box and you'll again be ready to use your Galaxy S5 with gloves on.

More: Blocking Mode on the Galaxy S5

We've found that having the increased sensitivity turned on doesn't negatively influence responsiveness even without gloves on, which is nice if you'll regularly be using them and don't want to toggle the setting over and over again. There are limits to this technology though — with thicker gloves, we found the phone still can't respond to all touches even with the setting turned on. Screen technology seems to be hit or miss with the thickest winter gloves, but at least with this setting you have a fighting chance of keeping warm and using your Galaxy S5.

  

For more, see our Galaxy S5 help page, and swing by our GS5 forums!