The point is: If you don't abuse your phone by dropping it on the ground, you know the warranty protects you. If you gently splash your phone, it's very possible it could break because it was defectively sealed, but the warranty won't help. Lots of products that are supposedly water resistant to X degree have not lived up to their labels. They should not be claiming any level of water resistance if they're going to categorically exclude water damage. It's one thing to say it is more likely to survive a splash than previous phones. But they're making a very specific claim that a certain amount of water is safe. That claim should have teeth.
Double standard. They shouldn't claim any amount of breakage resistance if they are going to categorically exclude trauma damage from their warranty. There is plenty of precedence for best effort claims backed by laboratory testing but that don't actually have teeth in warranties (car crash testing).
But the warranty does cover the screen just exploding out of nowhere. The key difference is with a screen there has to be trauma to exclude it from warranty. With water, even laying it super-gently under one inch for thirty seconds is not covered, when it's supposed to be safe for thirty minutes at five feet.
Car crash standards are okay, because the car always crumples, and they don't make promises like "you can crash a car at up to X pressure and the crash will not penetrate and cause damage". If a company was parading third-party lab results showing an immunity to 10mph collisions vs. walls, their warranty has no place excluding 5mph collisions vs. walls.
