I think that the new cable is from the manufacturer of the iphone cable, it is very thin and very flexible my experience with it, is that it collect less cable noise than the original cāble.
the iphone cable was asymmetric the reg cable is symmetric
Time will tell how reliable it is
I had many earphone with cable issue actually the n°1 reason to change earphone was that the cable broke, that's annoying on a 40$ and even more on a 400$ piece.
That said as far a I can tell westone makes the most reliable earphone