Twitter, Facebook, Instagram… All of them have at least one long press features at the bottom bar. I do agree it can be unintuitive if you never used it before, but it almost feels like a standard in apps nowdays. I feel like it’s pretty well used feature and it would be unused space if they moved somewhere else, you can access it in literally single click.
I guess most people didn’t watch apple event. Pro models have new A17 cpu with usb 3 controller inside, while regular iPhone 15 has last years Pro model A16 cpu (Apple does that with every new generation) which didn’t have usb 3 controller since lightning is still usb 2. iPads have support for usb 3 because they have separate usb 3 controller (not inside cpu because more space) so claiming that iPads have it for years is true but for different reason. So logically it would make sense that iPhone 16 base models will have A17 cpu with usb 3 controller.