About 20 yeses ago - pre-smartphones - my sister lost a phone to water damage. It was in a backpack pocket during a camping/hiking trip and the backpack got rained on a lot. Everyone else's phone was fine because they were kept either in waterproof backpack compartments or in trouser/waterproof coat pockets.

Around the same time, I also had a friend whose phone was broken when we were rafting and the raft capsized. The rest of us on the raft had left our phones at home because _why would you risk bringing a mobile phone on a homemade raft?!_

Those are the only two instances I know of personally where someone's phone has been destroyed by water damage and it hasn't just been an "oops I dropped it in the toilet" situation (I'm still not sure how people manage that). And even the second example was still due to stupidity, I think - there's a reason the rest of us didn't rake our phones on the raft. My sister's phone being damaged in the backpack is the only one that didn't feel preventable, and where a water resistance phone would genuinely have been a good thing.