Over the last few months, a great deal of time has been expended on the “hot competition” between Apple and Google in relation to smart phones. Much of this interest probably had to do with a partially imagined story of a once close friendship between Apple and Google, founded on their mutual enmity of Microsoft, now fractured on the rocks of competition and greed. While the truth probably isn’t as dramatic, whatever conflict exists is much less interesting than where they may overlap – especially when imagining where medical technology could go and how it would affect medical professionals. As most readers are undoubtedly aware, much of the recent discussion in the blogosphere on this topic (at least before January 27) was about the rapid ascent of the Android platform. The emergent themes were that the open and mutable nature of the Android operating system, the entry of multiple handset makers, and the absence of any restriction on software publishing will inevitably make Android the dominant smart phone platform of the future. The historical analogy given was desktop computing, where commodity hardware and a minimally restrictive operating system made Microsoft Windows the de facto standard, despite many obvious flaws. But, it seems this analogy is flawed and here’s why.

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The momentum and enthusiasm in the mobile technology world is, these days, clearly with Google.  The question for many people is whether to go with the reigning champion of the mobile device world(arguably Apple) or to take a chance on the challenger. The Nexus One, the flagship of the Android family of mobile devices, was unveiled to much fanfare in advance of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The veritable King Midas of the online world had finally decided to take on its equally successful counterpart in the consumer electronics world. In the middle of this battle of the corporate titans, what’s the medical professional to do?

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To our readers:

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up.  As I’m sure everyone knows by now, most of our medical app reviews are based on the iPhone / iPod Touch platform, but we have some exciting news.  We’re planning to roll out medical app reviews of Android based applications as well as our usual iPhone medical app reviews.

Also, remember that all of our full reviews can be found on the new post page feature on our site, they are organized by most recent and have a short description about the application.

http://www.imedicalapps.com/reviews/

If there are any android apps in particular you’d like reviewed let us know.  Most of the reviews we do come from requests from you, our readers.

Thanks!

Lately when I turn on the TV I feel I’m being bombarded with commercials for the Droid and being told how superior it is to the iPhone.  At first I thought these suggestions were completely outlandish and this was another phone trying to “imitate” the iPhone’s “mystique”.  However, I got the chance to play around with one the other weekend and I must say, Apple should feel scared.  I feel in love with the beautiful display, snappy processor speed, and the legitimate 3G connection.

There is no disputing Verizon is the majority when it comes to cell phone users, which makes the proliferation of the App Store even more astounding.  Verizon has approximately 89 million subscribers while AT&T has 81 million (Wikipedia).  What’s notable is how Verizon customers haven’t really had a smartphone they could get excited about until the recently released Droid.

There is a nice article in computerworld titled “7 Smartphone Predictions for 2010”.  One of the predictions they list is AT&T losing their exclusive relationship with the iPhone.  Its interesting how they start off the article though….

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