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This sounds naive, but why is it advantageous for Apple to limit transfer speeds? I understand adding a chip to control which accessories are fully compatible, but isn’t this a missed opportunity for Apple to tote new transfer speeds? Or would they only relegate transfer speeds for uncertified products?

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I believe it's simply that their older SoCs do not support USB 3 because it has never needed it. And the base not-Pro models will probably re-use the last year's Pro SoCs as it did this year. My bet is the new Pros will use a new SoC, and then the year after base phones will re-use that SoC and have USB 3.

Even when they re-used the iPhone SoCs for iPads, their solution is to add a separate USB 3.0 host controller, while leaving the client USB on the SoC USB 2.0: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ipad-mini-6-is-still-us... . That didn't stop them from advertising it as USB 3.0 of course.

Market segmentation. If you want the fancy new advertised transfer speeds you'll have to buy the more expensive Pro line.

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