ok sure, much like a lot of things in life, its not black and white, but rather a continuum. that may be so, however, it stands to reason that if it has existed on any of my previous iphones, then it has never been bad enough that I took notice.
This was the first time apple offered essentially two different phones; the X and the 8. I convinced myself that the X was the right move; it was the first time I ever paid over $1k for a phone (previously I had kept them in the 500-700 range). So, I spend this unthinkable amount of money for the flagship model; the top of the line, premium iphone.. and its NOW, of all the phones ive ever had, its the $1000+ iphone that gives me this problem? come on.. its not acceptable in my opinion, no matter how common we say it is. Im sure there are plenty of iphone x out there that don't have this issue and that the lens flare (or whatever the hell we want to call it) is so minimal that the user never notices. So I just happen to be the < 1% of users that purchased a unit with aberrant lenses.
Like.. it's ok that you see some lens flare when youre taking a photo and the sun is shining and its a nice spring day or whatever. Hell, it even makes it look cinematic and picturesque. But when you have an otherwise excellent photo op, in low light conditions, and you see these two white dots contaminating the every shot, it's not ok.
Yes, in some regards there is a lottery when it comes to the quality of any individual unit. There are those that are immaculate; perhaps the top 5% of all produced. Then you have the bottom 5% - these probably barely pass the QC checks, but are not outright rejected. Then you have everything in between. Well, those lenses that are crap but still passed QC are produced into full products, boxed up and shipped out, and bought by people like me who expect close to perfection when paying for premium flagship items. And some of those people who buy these bottom 5% phones end up coming to macrumors to share the experience and look for other users who experience the same thing.
My goal here is not to bitch and moan about Apple, iPhone, the iPhone X, etc etc.. but I do think that its worth bringing up and discussing. Obviously im not the only one, since OP also shared his experience. It just seems, however, that there is a difference of opinion on what constitutes a bad/poor lens, and what is considered "normal"