Forget passwords - you could soon be unlocking your phone by wrinkling your nose or sticking out your tongue

Google has filed a patent that could let users unlock their smartphones and tablets using facial expressions rather than typing in passwords. 

The latest Google Android devices already have a built-in Face Unlock feature that uses facial recognition to unlock their handsets, but this patent would take the technology a step further adding additional 'liveness' features. 

When Google launched Face Unlock in 2011, as part of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, it was criticised by security experts because it could be bypassed by holding static photos up to the phone or tablet's camera.

In the update to Android Jelly Bean in July 2012, Google added a 'liveness' check in an attempt to prevent these static images being used to gain access to devices. 

This meant a user would have to blink while using Face Unlock to prove they were alive.

However, even this could be bypassed using clever photo editing tricks.

According to Google's latest U.S patent, the new system would require users to pull a specific, predeterminded facial expression.

If a patent filed by Google is approved, it could mean users would be able to unlock their smartphones by pulling faces such as frowning, smiling, poking out their tongue, wrinkling their nose, blinking and so on. The technology would compare the facial expression pulled with a previously captured photo and if the expressions matched, the user would be allowed access to their device

Is this the first tablet you can really type on? Researchers say new 'split' layout could make typing 30% faster

Experts believe they have found the answer to the problem of typing with thumbs on tablet devices. Called KALQ, this split-screen layout is the latest challenger to the Qwerty keyboard

Since it was introduced in the late 19th century the QWERTY keyboard has certainly stood the test of time, despite numerous challengers. 

But the 1870s technology is ill-suited for today's tablets and other touch-screen devices when typing with the thumbs, expert say.

Experts at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Informatics think they have found the answer. Called KALQ, this split-screen layout promises to make typing with the thumbs 34 per cent faster

Technology: Microsoft threatened as smartphones and tablets rise

Microsoft faces a slide into irrelevance in the next four years unless it can make progress in the smartphone and tablet markets, because the PC market will continue shrinking, warns the research group Gartner.

It says a huge and disruptive shift is underway, in which more and more people will use a tablet as their main computing device, researchers say.That will also see shipments of Android devices dwarf those of Windows PCs and phones by 2017. Microsoft-powered device shipments will almost be at parity with those of Apple iPhones and iPads - the latter a situation not seen since the 1980s.

In a new forecast published on Thursday morning, Gartner says that by 2015 shipments of tablets will outstrip those of conventional PCs such as desktops and notebooks, as Android and Apple's iOS become increasingly dominant in the overall operating system picture. Android in particular will be installed on more than a billion devices shipped in 2014, says Carolina Milanesi, the analyst who led the research.

For Microsoft, income from Windows and Office licences are key to its revenues: per-PC Windows licences generate about 50% of its profits, and Office licences almost all the rest.But while it dominates the PC market, it is a distant third in the smartphone and tablet markets. Latest figures suggest that Windows Phone, its smartphone OS, shipped on about 3% of devices in fourth quarter of 2012, compared to 20% for Apple's iPhone and over 70% for Android - of which 50% connected to Google's servers and 20% were "white box" Android phones in China which do not use Google services.

"Android is going to get to volumes that are three times those of Windows," says Milanesi. "From a consumer perspective, the question becomes: what software do you want to have to get the widest reach on your devices? BlackBerry may say that its QNX software [used as the basis of BB10 on its new phones] can go into cars and phones, but Android is already in fridges. That's the challenge."