Fifteen years ago, I had a Garmin GPS (admittedly not a phone, but similar form factor) that survived a week of knocking around the bottom of a raft.

The battery compartment had a rubber gasket and some very tight screws.

▲

nine_k 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How much of the total volume of the device was the case/housing?

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.

	▲	mattkrause 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's been a long time, but the gasket itself was probably a millimetre or two thick, squeezed extremely tightly by the screws in the battery cover. It ran on AA or AAA batteries, and they took about about half or a third of the depth.
	▲	PunchyHamster 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You just need well designed rubber gasket. Thickness is impact resistance thing in those devices

▲

Groxx 19 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Honestly I'd expect that to be SIGNIFICANTLY easier to waterproof than a laundry machine. Partly because laundry is sometimes done warm, and warm softens materials (like gaskets), but mostly because laundry has surfactants that considerably reduce surface tension, making it far easier to slip past gaps.

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)).