The notch reminds me of the antenna lines they introduced with the 6/6+. I sighed when I looked at my 6+, then slapped it in a case which took care of that. Problem is, the notch is staring at you all the time and Apple's software implementation philosophy of embracing the notch just makes it even more prominent. So you either learn to live with it or skip it completely. Problem with skipping it is that Apple has already stated that this is the future of smarthphones, so don't expect the notch to go away next year. Heck, we may now see Android phone manufacturers do similar things, because if Apple can get away with it... yeah. That worries me a bit.
As for the X being ugly or beautiful. I feel it is neither. It has its moments of beauty, but the notch kills that. Overall, it's still a rectangle with rounded corners. Nothing really earth shattering. Nothing we haven't seen already. The edge-to-edge display and lack of home button makes it look a lot more fresh compared to the 8/8+, no doubt about that, but it still has very visible bezels and the extra screen real estate is kind of useless because of the software implementation. So they got rid of most of the bezels for no other reason than to look cool, which I'm totally okay with, but then the notch and the way the software works around it just kills that cool factor, leaving me back at square one. The fact that they then want me to pay so much extra for that just leaves me scratching my head going "Oookay? Really? Why?"
It is a phone that is going to be instantly recognizable and people that still think iPhones are status symbols are going to like that a lot.
