So I have an update! I bought the HiBY R2 II directly from their website it shipped immediately (on a weekend!) and I had it in my hands (in Ireland) less than a week later. It's basically everything the Shanling Q1 should have been. It's slimmer, almost half the weight, has a sane OS (so there's no need for Rockbox) and sounds great. Also had better battery life than the Q1 and you can play/pause using an inline remote on your wired headphones (and yes, Shanling screwed that up too). Bluetooth is rock solid. All in all I love it. I can even sync my music and playlists to it with MusicBee (on Linux) with very little messing around, and with a huge SD card it holds all my music.

Edit: the walker was my next choice but I thought they were discontinued? Anyways, the HiBY is available.