Do you suppose it's possible that it's no coincidence that people who dislike the notch don't use the phone?
I’m not surprised at all: these people knee-jerk so hard and often, they probably can’t afford Apple products after the paying for orthopedic surgeons.
And the “ignorant Apple fanboy” narrative that seems to be the counterargument to this falls laughably short when you realize that the number of Apple’s customers has been increasing exponentially for the last fifteen years, all while they continue to enjoy the top spot in consumer satisfaction surveys across virtually their entire product line.
certain notch designs are much better than others for keeping the screen from breaking.
It's "weird looking" at the moment because Apple was the first[1] with the <cough> "courage" to do this in order to integrate what's basically a Kinect into the front of a phone. But phones are already showing up that copy this solution.
[1] Well, Essential did it, but didn't commit to the degree that Apple did.
ALL design is compromise. The options available for this design are a) stop the entire screen below the sensors b) extend the screen around the sensors or c) remove the sensors.
A gives you less overall screen space, and leads to other problems like an imbalance between the ‘chin’ and ‘forehead’ areas. Of course you could remove even more screen sapce to balance that out, but...
C means you have no Face ID, which is closer to giving up than compromising.
B is obviously the option they went with, and having used the phone for several months, I’d have to say I agree with this compromise. I get some extra screen space by moving the status stuff up in to the ‘ears’ and I still get faceID.