According to the Sunday Times, software giants Google and Apple are introducing phones that identify users through sight and touch recognition, the Daily Mail reported.

Last week Apple applied to the US patent office to register facial recognition software, so instead of sliding to unlock the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, one could simply point it at one’s face.

The patent entitled ‘Low Threshold Face Recognition’, was picked up by Apple Insider blog, who said that “using a forward-facing camera to recognise an individual user, future iPhones and iPads from Apple could automatically customise applications, settings and features to a user''s personal preferences once they pick up the device.”

The website explained that Apple’s application stated rather than analysing a user’s entire face which can drain the battery, Apple’s concept would rely on a “high information portion’ of a human face.

It is understood that their system will scale the distance between a users eyes and mouth and once it has measured that against the image originally captured, it will be able to confirm that it is the same person and unlock.

The patent also details that each user could customize their personal profile with unique wallpaper, applications and settings, and that profile would be immediately accessed once the iPad recognizes a user’s face.

New phones using Google’s Andriod platform already have a face recognition tool that uses the inbuilt camera.

However, this new technology may not yet be effective to completely eradicate passwords in favour of facial recognition.

Within days of the Google Android facial recognition tool being launched, there were reports online claiming that it could be fooled by holding a photograph of the owners face up to the device.