Apart from the benefits of the edge "design" not being too relevant for me, the biggest issue I had was accidentally hitting notifications when I pulled the phone out of my pocket. At one point I somehow accidentally deleted an app, or something that resulted in the app being removed from the phone entirely. Granted I was travelling, doing a lot of hiking and so perhaps it was more aggressive handling than normal - but in general I found that not having an edge on the phone really hindered my ability to use it, and forced me to be extra careful in handling of the phone in regular use as well as when I pulled it out of my pocket or back in.
I've been seeing a lot of these "edge less" screens and a lot of other features that people don't really care about, with a move away from what customers actually want. Like removing the headphone port in the iPhone 7 or going in this direction with edge to edge screens and making the phone thinner and thinner but faster and faster (meaning less battery life, and spottier performance since the CPU needs to be throttled).
Smart phones have been a commodity for a bit now - and the important things are the incremental improvements in battery life, performance, screen resolutions and graphics, networking efficiency and most importantly the services that power the phone which is effectively a way to access the internet.