Best Smartphone for Medical School

[ThrombinHood]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

This is the annual " What phone should I get for medical school thread?".

I've read over the past few year's worth of threads of this topic and it seems every year the consensus is to go with an iPhone due to easy usability and large medical app store. Yet, there are those that buy android hoping that the medical application market will boom. Recently between 2013 to 2014 with Android taking a majority of the tablet and smartphone market, are the medical apps such as WebMD, Epocrates, NIH/NCBI , anatomy apps , etc comparable or even surpass that of iphones?

Is there still a reason to buy the iphone? Is there any reason a medical school would lean towards Apple's products?

I don't want to start an android versus iphone war, but rather re-discuss a topic after a year of large changes in the mobile device market.

Personally, I'm leaning towards buying the Nexus 5. But, I havent absolutely set my mind on this.

 

[Microglia]

Overall I can't see this mattering to your school- it's really your choice.

 

[NickNaylor]

At this point, it seems like Android is finally starting to catch up to Apple with respect to enterprise IT deployment. In other words, I think most large systems will support both Android and iOS. However, based on my own limited experience, iOS seems to be easier to use for most things. I have an Android device, and while, for example, our EMR and VPN system supports Android, tech support was useless (both the support itself and their supposed directions for setting up Android devices) and I was only able to get my phone to work by tinkering on my own. My friends with iOS devices, on the other hand, had absolutely no problem. It seems that support for iOS gets rolled out as a priority over support for Android when it comes to things like this.

It's not a big deal one way or another. It's not as if you're going to be using your phone all that frequently at this point in your career. That said, if you want a phone that is both 1) most likely to work with your future school's IT system and 2) want access to the most high quality apps, I'd say go with iOS.

 

[darkjedi]

I would still recommend iPhone, only because it seems like 80%+ of physicians have iPhones where I am. You probably won't go wrong with Android, but the level of support for iOS is definitely stronger since the vast majority of physicians are already on it. Better to go with the flow in this case than be the odd man out and lose out on common apps.

 

[pDeluxe]

BQ aquarius with ubuntu touch is my plan ;D

 

[Pacna]

Get one that texts, calls, takes pictures, and can surf the web.

 

[TooMuchResearch]

Android. No contract. Small enough to fit in a pocket. Good battery life. Cheapest plan that meets your needs. Use it until it breaks.