Not baffling at all.

Touch screens are imprecise. They're good for fat fingers, and broad/continuous gestures. Dpads are good for precise and discrete movements/gestures. Incremental movements of small widgets works very well with a dpad. Touch screens, with inertial scrolling and such, are much better suited for fast movement and selecting large widgets. Incremental or precise movements of small widgets on a touch screen is abysmally annoying and error prone.

Dpads are great companions to a touch screen. The one that's baffling is the HTC Android phones that all pair a trackball with a touch screen (since tiny trackballs, especially on Android where you can't adjust the sensitivity, are suited for fast and imprecise movement, just like touch screens).

Or did you mean the gold color of the dpad? yeah, that's kinda garish.