I got my first in-person look at the Palm Pre smartphone Monday in Barcelona, and I came away a believer.  Having not gone to CES last month, I hadn't yet seen Pre in person, and while I trusted my fellow bloggers when they proclaimed that Pre really was all that and a bag of chips, I'm the sort of skeptic who needs to see for himself in order to really believe.

Since seeing Pre in person, several friends of mine have asked me the same Million Dollar Question: Is it better than iPhone?  "Better" is really subjective when it comes to evaluating a smartphone, mainly because every user has unique wants and needs in a mobile device.

That said, my answer is a reserved Yes: Pre in its current state really is better than iPhone when it comes to core services like messaging, notifications, and integrated local/Web search.  Thing is, Pre hasn't launched yet and everyone I know is betting the farm that Apple's sitting on a hot new iPhone ready to be unveiled right around the time that Pre hits the streets.  So Apple could be poised to deflate Palm's balloon just as it readies for a glorious launch.

Never mind the speculation for now, though.  The fact of the moment, so to speak, is that Palm's Pre is a mightily impressive device - the WebOS in particular is an excellent example of form meeting function.  Imagine iPhone's eye candy, only sweeter, with smooth animations, eye-pleasing graphics, and multi-touch gestures including one to literally flick apps and conversations off of the screen when you're done with them.  

Now imagine that eye candy merged with the kinds of mobile services and functionality that tech geeks and mainstream users alike can appreciate: True multitasking, wireless syncing of calendars and contacts across multiple accounts, integrated search across local content (like your address book) and online data (like Google and Wikipedia).  

That gives you a basic picture of Pre: Honestly, it's that good.  I have concerns about the tiny QWERTY buttons and vertically sliding form factor, and of course everyone's wondering if Sprint can give Pre the kind of US launch and support that Palm so dearly needs (and, it would seem, deserves).  But the "Wow!" far outweighs the "Hmm..." when it comes to my take on this pre-production Pre.

Palm is hard at work on getting an SDK into developers' hands and ensuring that consumers will have the widest range of options possible when it comes to extending Pre's capabilities with user-installed software.  And they're confident that the WebOS will make developing for Pre much, much easier than developing for iPhone.  So we'll just have to see what emerges in the way of Pre/WebOS apps in the coming months.

Meantime, buckle up and get ready for a fun ride.  2009 is shaping up to be the year that Web-connected smartphones get easy to use and out into the hands of the masses, and not just the hardcore phone geeks.