We must admit, at first, that we failed to recognize the device outright.

Intrigued? Well, so were we.

What we have here, boys and girls, is the Samsung i4550 which counts, among its unique features, a dual-slide design. But some of you have probably seen that already.

The other positive rarity here is (now brace yourselves!), the Samsung i4550 runs on Symbian 9.2 OS and flashes the Series 60 third edition graphic user interface. Neat, huh.

Now admit it you all, especially those who have lately got hooked on Samsung phones. Didn’t you not wish for Symbian into many exceptional Samsung phones to make them well, truly exceptional?

So here’s the Samsung i4550 with its key features: Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 UI; dual-slide design with unique touch wheel key; 2.4" 256K color TFT LCD display with QVGA resolution; 3G with HSDPA; 3.5mm standard stereo audio jack; microSD memory card slot for higher capacity cards; FM radio with RDS and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP.

Do we hear some people swoon? Now how about this, we had this phone for two months now, or way before its promotional launch as a music phone along with two others (see related story below).

Which means we’re way past the swoon and have been enjoying i450 for quite some time now.

Yep, we’ve been liking it even though the i450 is not too compact at 102x50x17.9 mm and 114g. As a "brick" it looks passable, then the fun starts when you do the slide.

Or slides, if we might add, since a slide "up" means you’re ready to do your usual tasks with any slider and a slide "down" reveals the touch wheel key that is focused on what else, but music.

Okay, okay, you can also access from the menu but hey, who wants to live a boring life?

Musically, the i450 supports a number of audio formats including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. Tracks are easily transferred to the phone via Bluetooth, USB or by downloading them from the internet. When USB transfer is completed, the phone automatically prompts scanning for new music tracks which can be sorted based on their artist, album, genre and composer.

With 14 equalizer presets, you can play any music any which way you want and, with the A2DP Bluetooth profile, you can play your favorite tracks on stereo Bluetooth headphones.

The Samsung i450 also has Real Player and Flash Player. The video player can display in landscape or portrait mode or you can switch to full screen. Good video quality is one good feature in the i450.

Going back to the Symbian thingy, the i450 is proving to be adequate in browsing the internet. Web pages fit the screen just right. Mobile office is also above par with Word and Excel files.

Oh, we must mention, too, that the i450 is a 3G smartphone complete with 3G HSDPA technology for multi-tasking and high speed connection. Use the 3G video calling in telling friends and family that you are lucky to have the i450. The built in EDGE technology is for high speed data transfer three times faster than GPRS.

But we insist, if you’re really lucky to get a Samsung i450, to slide "down" to enjoy the touch wheel key and the cool Bang and Olufsen ICEpower audio amplifier for that ultra music experience.

Overall, Samsung i450 is one fun smartphone, and we feel a commendation is in order to whoever put this device together.