I prefer the hole, for two reasons: A lot less total space of the display is missing, and the part that is missing is one side rather than the middle, so you still have room for a mostly full width uninterrupted status bar.
And if you have no interest in Face ID that's reasonable preference.
Are you saying face ID is so fragile moving the camera 1 inch or less than an inch to the right kills all functionality? You manage to line your phone up so precisely each time you use it?
But it isn't just a camera, its an array of stuff
Not OP, but I believe he's talking about how the iPhone's large notch size is due to additional hardware used by face id. Having that size notch on the left/right side wouldn't be much better than in the center.
Personally, I'd rather use my fingerprint anyway.
They have infrared and dot projector, otherwise every phone has mic, speaker, proximity sensor, etc. They chose to stuff everything in the notch, it wasn't necessary.