One of the major improvements (you could say that) Apple has made to the iPhone 7/7 Plus is by making the home button a solid state button. This means that there are no moving parts, thus helping with its water-resistance, and also means that it won’t fail on you, at least as far as moving parts are concerned.
However it has been discovered that there is a huge flaw with this new home button, and that is it requires contact with the user’s skin in order for it to work. As discovered by Myke Hurley on Twitter (via GSMArena), the home button will not work unless there is skin contact, meaning that if you wear gloves, you’ll be out of luck.
Prior to this, Touch ID also required skin contact (obviously), but the button still worked when you pressed on it, so if you wear gloves you could still operate the phone and unlock it by entering your passcode. In this instance, regardless of whether you have a passcode setup or not, no skin contact means no phone operation. We suppose the alternative is to press the sleep/wake button on the side, but once again, gloved hands could mean it would be hard to operate the touchscreen as well.
It is possible that maybe Apple fix this by issuing a software that amps up the sensitivity of the home button, but for now it is a mixed bag of results from users who have tried using the phone even with touchscreen-friendly gloves.