I like the rationale behind your suggestion, it makes sense. But I fear it would kill the intuitiveness of reading the star menu: it's proximity to the buttons is (more or less) self-explanatory. Putting the star along the top would break this effect.
On the other hand, once you've mastered the star button, reading it is almost a non-issue. I use the star menu dozens of times every day and I never stop to look at it anymore, it's just a bunch of key-sequences to me (my HK1 pops the menu, then some other key to launch whatever).
I would appreciate having larger soft-buttons for the top section (which I always use with my fingers), but this would probably only fit when in 480x320 mode.