AppleCare is not warranty (but is an equivalent), while AppleCare+ is the equivalent of insurance. I've edited my post to clarify this a little better.

Since Apple make no distinction between "malicious damage" and "accidental damage", then everything is called accidental. However, there are times where accidental damage is covered under warranty (or rather, a "service program") when there's an issue that's widespread enough that is attributed to a manufacture or design defect -- the warping of the plastic on the bottom of the Late 2009 Macbook comes to mind.

Nah, an overbearing parent smashing a phone to "teach them a lesson" isn't an "accident"

I don't need to be careless or have any real danger of dropping my phone in water to worry about water protection; humidity, sweat, rain, accidental splashes from a sink, spilled drinks, children, etc. are all very real often unpredictable water risks I might have very little opportunity to realistically avoid. I've seen those water detection stickers indicate water on devices that I know for a fact have been babied and never dunked for even a moment. Often humidity and a sweaty pocket were the only likely culprit.

I get caught outside in the rain unexpectedly about a dozen times a year living in a tropical city where it can go from dry to raining so heavy you can't see the other side of the street with about 30 seconds warning.

Those powerful storms are often very small and they might only rain for a minute or two. It's impossible to predict when they will pass over, the city might be hit by 50 or so of them in a single day, but they're so small most of the city won't see any rain even though it technically rained 50 times somewhere in the city.

Despite being small they it can be heavy enough to cause flash flooding. The city has pumps that can force 70,000 litres of water per second out of the city and into the ocean (before that, it was near impossible to live here).

I carry a dry bag for my laptop and headphones everywhere I go, I guess I'd be putting my phone in there too, which will be annoying.

I swim with my galaxy phone. It's nice to be able to take pics of my son anywhere in the water park.

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.

People read their phones on the toilet - probably every single modern phone user has done it at least once. It is not inconceivable that a small, but significant, number of them have fumbled the phone and it has fallen into the bowl.

Likewise, pools, beaches, and boats are places people are very likely to go with their phones in tow and in use. It is not unlikely some of those - one can assume - millions of instances have produced some contacts between phone and water.

I ride a motorcycle and mount my phone on the handlebars for guidance. I spend a lot of effort keeping it dry and have actually lost a couple of USB cables (but not the phone, thankfully) to damp.