Yeah I'm on the exact opposite of that. I only know two people who really want hardware on the front. Most of my friends don't care at all, they want other things like fast performance, good security, a great camera, etc.
But which way is better is not really my point, it's that we have no way of knowing what people actually want. The votes with their dollars argument falls apart though because that's one of many features of those two lines of phones and neither line has ever offered an option without those buttons, so there is no way to know which particular features or combination of features that consumers prefer. Most consumers honestly won't care at all but those that would if given the choice may not even realize that there is a choice to be had. The truth is there is no way to buy an iPhone without a home button and there's no way to buy a Note 7 without a home button ... and there is almost zero percent of consumers who would change their purchase decision based solely on one design feature, unless that feature is very specific and needed for functionality, like dual SIM, etc. This is an unresearched topic so there's no way to provide evidence to say which is preferred.