For those of you who thought that Samsung copied the back-slider idea from Nokia, you are quite wrong. The back slider has absolutely nothing to do with the N95.

As you know, the Nokia N95 has 4 multimedia keys on the back-slider, and they have a backlight. It happens that the Samsung i450 just has a sort of a navi-wheel at the back, as well as speakers.

I'm not going to go in any detail as the Samsung i450 review is coming up soon, but the difference is obvious in these Symbian dual-slide smartphones. The N95 looks much more "smartphone-ish" as the buttons are labelled in a abnormal layout. On the other hand, the i450 looks more friendly, although the mix of the blue and white colours makes it look like a toy, although it is a S60 smartphone.

Again the N95's form is more "square-ish" which doesn't seem attractive to consumers, and the same thing below, where the i450 has a poorly designed volume button, and too on the left side, while the N95 has a detailed volume button on its right side. The memory card slot however, it's better on the i450 as it isn't easily damaged, unlike on the N95.

The N95 is far simpler than the i450, as it has the 3.5mm jack on it. The i450's 'on/off/profile' switch is far smaller than the N95, which is rather uncomfortable. There is nothing to say about the i450's 3.5mm jack slot as it feels good to open and close.

The differences on the camera buttons are obvious: the N95's button is far larger as it is more camera-focused and needs the autofocus level. Although camera isn't the focus of the Samsung device, it still needs a comfortable button, which it doesn't have.

There isn't much to say about the i450's back. It isn't camera-focused, so again, it doesn't need a pretty layout and design around the camera. Although an interesting design such as the one on the N95's camera would attract more consumers.

The i450's keys are larger than the N95's but the N95 are rounder and feel better at press. The i450 don't feel bad at press, but are flat, which send it behind the N95's keypad quality.

Now the most important part: the back-slider:

They are very different back-sliders as said in the beginning of the article. The N95 has four flat multimedia keys with a blue backlight, while the i450 has a scroll wheel, speakers, and no backlight whatsoever.

I would prefer that there were music keys as well at the back instead of the speakers. There is a loudness reduction if the phone is closed, such as in a ringing tone. The speakers should be somewhere else. The navi-wheel is in half, but it feel really good at the hand, although it's not used anywhere else but in music player application.

Nothing much to say about the N95's multimedia keys, we all know what they do, if not, head over to the N95 review.

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