Immersion was their goal with the thinner bezels. The notch hinders immersion in instances such as browsing with Safari in landscape mode where solid-colored padding is added on both sides for the sole purpose of compensating for the notch. The notch also draws attention to itself. They missed the mark.

Don't get me wrong the notch enables novel functionality. But they should have figured out how to do it without blocking out a chunk of the screen.