You might read this article as saying "here is a new innovation by Apple that you should be amazed by," but I think a much more natural reading is "here is a hack to get a better experience from your (Apple) product if you don't mind trading battery life for CPU/brightness."

The author does mention this Android feature in passing, claiming that "it’s not like the extreme low power modes found on Android phones that basically turn everything off and turn your $600+ phone into a dumb phone."

Disclaimer: I use an Android phone. I don't use low power mode, so I don't know if his "dumb phone" claim is correct.

From my experience no it does not turn them into dumb phones, just disables most background sync, you can still turn on mobile data and wifi and use them, but they will turn off as soon as the phone "sleeps", lowers brightness etc etc.

My phone has a low power mode (Sony Z3) which works the way he's describing the iPhone feature. It also has a super low power mode that turns it into a dumb phone so perhaps that's where he got the misguided notion that Android turns into a dumb phone in low power mode.