This is because they were forced to build it with USB-C by evil Europe!

Well I mean this is sample size 1. Not possible to say how much the test results were affected by the phones not landing exactly the same way. Maybe one was weakened by an unlucky early drop and then shattered faster? From this, I would not generally infer that one is "better" than the other. But it is still plausible

You want the right to repair your own devices? Have fun repairing.

I don’t believe the phones are intentionally designed to be less durable and personally I applaud making the phones easier to repair. But part of me wonders if whatever changes they made to make the phone easier to repair also made it a less durable.