Unlocking our phones is quite the hassle. Sticking a PIN or password on the lock screen is your most reliable option, but inputting that information every time admittedly gets old. There's face unlock, but that's too easy to circumvent. As for fingerprint scanning? The required hardware isn't exactly widespread. So now Descartes Biometrics is offering users the ability to unlock their smartphones... using their ears.

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Once installed, ERGO serves as your phone's lockscreen. All you need to do to unlock the device, at least in theory, is tap on the screen and hold the phone up to your ear. If it doesn't work, then the app falls back to a good old-fashioned password. This is good, because if your luck is anything like mine, you're going to need it. If only I had President Obama's ears.

If ERGO absolutely fails to recognize your ear, you can reduce its accuracy to increase your chances. Of course, this also increases the odds that someone else's ears will be able to bypass it as well. I'd say those are odds that are probably already uncomfortably high to begin with, but given that I couldn't get my ears to work, there's a chance criminal Joe Schmo wouldn't be able to as well.

Anyone up for a $3.99 experiment can give the app a try in the Play Store below.