If one can’t use a keyboard, maybe the laptop form factor is not the right one to choose.
I'm not who you are replying to, but as someone with a condition that leads to dry, cracked skin on my fingertips, it's not that I can't use a keyboard, it's that fingerprint scanning doesn't work for me. Thankfully it's not the only way to unlock a MBP.
This is going to sound awfully like shilling. But I’m a large fan of the “unlock with Apple Watch” feature of the Mac; and I’ve tried to reverse engineer it for Linux.
Look into KDE Connect which has a similar feature. Not proximity based as far as I know, but it handles the hard part of unlocking the device.
My problem with it is it only works 75% of the time. Another 15% of the time it just hangs indefinitely. And 10% it just doesn't even try.
This makes me curious wether you have used a FaceID device or not. I remember saying the same thing but now I kind of “hate” using a TouchID device.
I'd take a touch sensor on the back of the phone like is common on android devices over face id any day of the week, by the time the phone is level with your face it's already opened.
Then you’d have to pick it up each time (or use PIN). FaceID works pretty well even when the phone is lying in front of you.
I also think that with FaceID my phone is generally unlocked when I pick it up as well.
Apparently you haven't been wearing facemasks for the last year like the rest of us...
I have, but I think I unlock my device at home/work/maskless 99 times for each 1 time I need to do it with a mask. And 99 times I do that, I am generally in a place where I can just pull down my mask safely for 1s. That last 1 time I am OK to use the PIN.
Because with Face ID the computer would be unlocked before your finger even reaches the key.