We say that a smooth normed space has a property (SL), if every mapping preserving the semi-inner product on is linear. It is well known that every Hilbert space has the property (SL) and the same is true for every finite-dimensional smooth normed space. In this paper, we establish several new results concerning the property (SL). We give a simple example of a smooth and strictly convex Banach space which is isomorphic to the space , but without the property (SL). Moreover, we provide a characterization of the property (SL) in the class of reflexive smooth Banach spaces in terms of subspaces of quotient spaces. As a consequence, we prove that the space have the property (SL) for every . Finally, using a variant of the Gowers–Maurey space, we construct an infinite-dimensional uniformly smooth Banach space such that every smooth Banach space isomorphic to has the property (SL).