That would be referring to this?
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/304/media/images/61357000/jpg/_...Sorry but no. That's visually like the iOS 7 implementation which is so hard to use. The exact one I complained about.
There's far more to a good UI than just the basic idea — even the requirement of the iPhone's 60 FPS prioritised animation rendering and good finger tracking helped make that digital representation so intuitive.
Also the recovery animations (what happens when you don't finish the slide), the ability to slide back and forth with tracking (e.g., in that Neonode screenshot it says "swipe" indicating a single gesture, not a continuous one). And how the screen transitions from completed slide to home screen. These are important details that you have completely overlooked in your claim.
I even mentioned the important element of the visual "track" in which the button slides as part of the key features, which is nowhere to be found in the images I saw for Neonode. Apple even used a text-sheen animation in the direction of the slide to visually hint at the direction, that required masking an animated gradient into text back on the original iPhone hardware.
Obviously sliding mechanisms existed in physical reality prior to iPhone. I'm not sure why that's relevant as it's part of what makes the digital version intuitive.
Apple introduced this interface. The Neonode one is not even in the same universe of usability, design or details.