That's amazing, thank you. I had no idea this was possible on my iPhone SE. I'm assuming that there is a lot of other things that my phone can do that I am completely ignorant of.
Tried it on my iPhone 8 (by disabling 3d touch). It seems to be a lot less precise for whatever reason. And one issue is also that the swipe always starts at the lowest end of the screen and it's not easily possible to scroll downwards with it, since one starts at the spacebar which is at the very bottom of the screen. With 3d touch one starts the gesture somewhere in the middle of the keyboard, which provides room in every direction.
On devices with 3D Touch you can also press harder to activate text selection, which is something I use daily.
Long press does this.
But you are already long-pressing in order to use the cursor?
With the spacebar alternative method you can also activate text selection.
iPhone X with 3D Touch enables: the space bar longpress worked for me. This is actually more convenient as the 3D Touch hurts my finger and sometimes activates the alternate letter options.