Yeah. But you remove the sim card assembly (BOM), connector/solder pads (system design and internal space) and remove potential ingress points. It's just easier and cheaper from engineering through to production.
Dude, they have under water cameras , you can swim with fucking whales with a huge ass cameras, I'm not going swimming with my phone.
Fick all these ratings, it's not like they would make it cheaper for you. Give me back changeable batteries, I'm not fucking fish.
They're chasing IP ratings. I like not losing a phone when I make a dumb, but prefer lightly sealed or unsealed with a replaceable battery. My LG V20 was the bees knees.
They're making SIM and non-SIM versions so that let's them use the same tooling for both versions. It's still a BOM reduction, but yeah, the other points would be a much smaller impact.
I'm not entirely sure how much of a difference it would make in reality, but they're probably doing it for a reason. Though, with google devices, they may just be trying to nudge other manufacturers in a direction for their own reasons. Google phones help them set and maintain certain standards without trying to force other manufacturers to do what they want.
Is there a motive you see for Google to do this that isn't per-unit cost savings?