My wife bought the S8, and after a couple dozens times getting frustrated with the virtual buttons I've decided I have zero interest in going that way until I'm forced to.
I know how you feel to a degree- at first I wasn't keen on the idea of virtual buttons vs. real.
But it's funny how your perspective changes. Now I'm so used to virtual buttons on my Note 8, that I catch myself swiping up from the bottom of my older button devices and wondering for a second where my damn buttons are and "what's up with this thing?" before I catch myself.
Then I kind of realize... wow, all that bezel just to accommodate these buttons I don't even feel the need for anymore. I'm pretty much sold on virtual buttons- never thought I would be.
There are still a few things I find annoying:
Many times swiping to access them is just damned annoying, depending on the app. In an app like PlayerPro, it takes some accuracy to get the button bar without hitting the progress bar and skipping to some random point in a track.
I can hardly ever bring it up in a browser without an unwanted page scroll.
And so far the worst is an app like True Caller which I use as a dialer. It's super easy to hit the call button while swiping the button bar and dial someone accidentally.
I'm also not a fan of how it stays active under a virtual keyboard, and on occasion I may miss the spacebar and hit the home button- dumping me out of whatever I was typing.
I also wish the buttons weren't always present in Nova Launcher- instead of just swiping up when I need them, so the dock doesn't sit a row up from the bottom. (Edit: just realized Nova fixed this with a setting!)
There's definitely some things to get past, but overall after getting used to the Note 8 I don't actually want to go back to physical buttons on a phone. Worth the minor annoyances so far for the lack of bezel. And yeah... I never thought I'd say that.