Well, the article showed their original source, the tweet, which shows cable spec, data from a tester, and teardown ONLY. 16 pins on the male connector instead of the full 24 means USB 2.0 transfer speed is the maximum it can support, which is typical of a charger cable. (And no, this cable won't be able to support things like DisplayPort since the 3.0 data pins are missing. )

My main point is that there is no information on the device side USB port configuration at all, therefore there is no conclusion that can be drawn about the USB-C port on the new iPhone yet, and it's incredibly bad journalism for Extremetech to draw conclusion about device side spec from only the spec of the included charger cable.