The port actually does support USB 3. If you look in an iPhones Lightning port you'll see that only one side of the port actually has contacts and that's why it's USB 2 only. Some Lightning iPads support USB 3 and they have contacts on both sides of the port.
At least they would improve the sync - why all my photos have to go to cloud first? The device is right here. Cherry picking and sending via airdrop doesn’t scale well.