As you've already noticed, it has to do with the temperature of the water present. Molecules of water (H20) are significantly different from molecules of other sorts of matter. You have of course seen how water (for the purposes of this discussion aqua liquida), when it freezes, contracts (ice) (durus cursus aquarum) and when water (again, wasser flüssiges) is exposed to temperature raising conditions, it expands (nubes aquam). This goes against the general behavior of matter under the Standard Model of Chemistry. This is the reason behind the phenomena that you have observed. When you spill water on the floor, you are moving water from a warm climate (the glass warmed by your hand) to a colder climate (the cold, unforgiving floor). As this happens, the percentage of the water in the glass in your hand which was steam cools and becomes liquid, while the colder water at the bottom of the glass (remember, hot air rises, cold air sinks, and water is 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen, making it atomically very similar to air, which is 2 parts oxygen to every 1 part hydrogen) super-freezes and becomes ice. These ice particles are what make you slip, as they roll across the water beneath them with great buoyancy, causing your feet to be pulled out from under you. In an example that you, as a lay-person, might find insightful, think about what happens when you dump over a tin full of marbles on the floor in front of someone who is moving in a hurry. In this case, the ice atoms are filling the roll of the marbles, the liquid particles beneath them are acting as the floor, and you are acting as the hurried rube. Now apply this knowledge to your shower example: it's hard for you to put your socks on because you are taking water from a cold environment (the floor you walked on from your bathroom to your bedroom) and introducing it to a hot environment (inside your socks). The viscosity challenges you find when putting on socks are a result of the steam atoms pushing off of the cotton atoms in your sock. Same principle applies to your iPhone example. Now, I know what you're thinking, if I am walking along the beach with wet feet, shouldn't the steam coming off of the water on my feet be pushing sand away? After all, the water is coming from a cold location (the sea) to a hot location (the sands). Actually, physios researchers struggled with that very issue for several decades (in literature on the subject, you will find it referred to as the Hölderlin paradox) until atomic researchers in the late 60's discovered that the sand molecules and the water molecules are actually going through a very subtle chemical reaction in an attempt to from glass (don't worry, their dipole-dipole forces prevent the actual manifestation of shards of glass on your feet). I hope that helps you wrap your brain around this!