Surprisingly the phone was fine and works fine after a brief rinse under the tap. It must be hard to combine that sort of water resistance with easy user changing.
Modern phone water resistance is incredible. I've even seen people literally swim with their phones and not even question if it was a bad idea.
The battery compartment had a rubber gasket and some very tight screws.
I suppose the glue-everything approach is partly due to the desire of making a device very thin. There's no room for strong, load-bearing outer case, the internals are load-bearing.
There is a good reason waterproofing claims are specific about the kind of liquid (usually just fresh or salt water, usually without significant movement (i.e. jets, like you get in a shower)).
These devices are mostly sold in enterprise environments (eg field use, factories) and as such get a lot of wear and tear. But they hold up well. They're not ultra rugged but a good compromise. We use tons of them in our factories, we replaced DECT handheld phones with the Xcovers loaded with ms teams. Not an ideal setup (teams for mobile kinda sucks) but at least this way they can easily communicate with people in the offices.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if IP68 could be achieved in a phone without glue. There's no clamping mechanism for the backs, they're just press-fit with small clips.
It also officially support submersion in seawater as well as cleaning with soapy water. Most glued phones support neither.
Which is funny to me, because even with an IP68 phone, I get worried if I even splash a little water on it.
The thing is - if the battery had been destroyed, that could have been replaced...
I've also had iPhone dying from gasket leaks, the circumferential double sided tape seal dries out after a while.
