Samsung and HTC ‘unveil’ the same April Fools’ Day products: tech gloves

It’s quite telling of the current obsession with wearable tech that HTC and Samsung have both unveiled similar new products today: tech gloves.

(Yes, it’s officially April 1 in Asia so you can expect to see more tech industry jokes than you care to know about.)

Samsung is one of the first out of the blocks with Samsung Fingers, an “all-over-hand wearable device featuring a flexible Super Emo-LED for the technology-sensitive consumer.”

Samsung Fingers is the slimmest (0.2mm) and lightest (1g) wearable glove by Samsung and comes with a wide 3 inch flexible UHD Super Emo-LED display. Combined with an advanced 16 megapixel camera, Samsung Fingers offers the best-looking selfies you get your hands on. Samsung Fingers also supports the latest, fastest networks including 5G and Wi-Fi 902.11wz so you can keep in touch with the latest. Boost your creativity with dedicated features such as Finger Painter and S-tut.

The gloves comes with a bevvy of features and specifications:

Gestures can be used to pick up calls and do other things:

There is one part of the stunt that I would like to see replicated in real-life: solar charging:

In case you weren’t sure, Samsung includes a disclaimer at the bottom of the announcement: “Actually, as most of you will have noticed, this is not a real product or concept by Samsung at all – at least not yet. Happy April Fool’s!”

Wishful thinking, guys, you aren’t fooling anyone with this… and it’s April Fools’ not Fool’s.

The HTC Gluuv — first spotted by 9to5google — at least includes more than just drawings. The device itself looks like glorious sci-fi tech fit for a Buck Rogers show, or perhaps a Daft Punk video if we’re talking retro.

The ‘beta’ device syncs with the new One M8, and a physical boombomb stereo — remember them?

HTC makes the same jokes about integrated screens, ridiculously hi-res cameras (for selfies) and gestures, but there’s no disclaimer-in-case-you-thought-this-was-real.

Overall, we’d crown HTC the winner but — without wishing to sound like Scrooge or a jaded tech reporter — I’d actually prefer it if neither company bothered to do April Fools’ pranks going forward.

They’re so predictable that two companies can announce the same product and, frankly, they aren’t funny either — so why bother?

Headline image via Kārlis Dambrāns / Flickr