Thought I would post in here after Linus comment on the wan show. He mentioned that after doing some research he thinks it’s because the A16 bionic doesn’t support faster than usb 2 speeds but once again research seems to be lacking the latest iPad mini (6th gen) uses the A15 Bionic and has usb type C at usb3 gen 1 speeds (5GB/s) so they could have done that on the iPhone 15 but decided to.
Another note is about making two different models they already do a USA only model as they only do eSIM in the US, but physical sim outside of Europe, granted it’s not as big as a different port.