Believe me, this is better. The curiosity urge is what gets the phone pulled out of the pocket. From there, it's very low friction to decide to open it up and start screwing around. Separating the two acts has, for me, been an improvement.

...or you could just set custom notification tones and vibrate patterns/intensity levels for specific apps/contacts/labels/anything (on android)

It's not the same as reading, though. I've done that in the past and it worked out like this:

"Oh, I know exactly who is texting me. They are a high priority person in my life. Let's make sure they're okay...

Aaand it's a cat gif."

The text display is the game-changer here.