it's fun how we all look for different DAPs. I'm willing to go as small and ugly as a sansa clip' screen if it gets me 2 more hours of battery life. I gave up on the f886 because the screen was uselessly big for my needs and killing the battery in real time even at minimum brightness.
about the pad shape, I agree it's not pretty. but I believe it will be better to use in a pocket than the E585's design(or previous ones of the same shape). here you can't mistakenly hit "back" or "option" while switching tracks, and having pointy shapes also separates up and down from next/previous better, while actually keeping the same buttons underneath.
what's funny is that the pic made me think about a cowon dap and scared me. but then I remembered that the software UI would be from sony and not some nightmarish cowon creature.