Almost two years on there is still a lot of scepticism around Face ID. For me it works fine, but others seem to have issues, or different use cases and struggle quite a bit. So either from inside information or shear hope, talk of Apple returning to Touch ID still exists. It’s hard to see Apple ‘backtracking’ because they see FaceID as the future, but perhaps the best way is to have multiple methods.

Since picking up the Note10+ it has become obvious to me that under screen finger print sensors are still a bit rubbish. Better ones exit, such as the OnePlus 7, but they are still a bit slow and unreliable. Implementation of them seems like a step backwards, but combine this with face unlock and the Note10 is the best of both worlds.

Pick the device up and it looks for your face straight away, the face unlock is no where near as good as Face ID, but a large percentage of the time it’s unlocked before you realise it. Should this fail, then placing your finger on the screen is pretty easy for the few times it fails. In fact many times users are already touching the screen ready to use it, security features that fade into the background and stop being a consideration are the best designed.

The real solution could be slightly less stringent matching of both the finger and face combined, tolerances could be lower to make sure matches are easier, but combined together means much more secure system. A system that checks for multiple points is both secure and user friendly. Someone might know your PIN number, but iOS knows that it isn’t you so perhaps only allows access to certain parts of the OS.

Whats the odds of someone having a similar face and a very similar finger print? Even identical twins don’t have the same finger prints, so no evil twin breaking into your phone any longer! Apple could then take things further with Apple Watch authentification, WiFi and Bluetooth options – the possibilities are endless.