During Apple’s Keynote, it was briefly mentioned that all iPhone 17 models were bumped to faster wired charging, from 50% in 30 minutes to 50% in 20 minutes. We will have to wait to see what the actual charging speed in watts is until someone gets a unit for lab testing.

However, what Apple didn’t mention is that it also launched a new 40W charger, and labeled it, confusingly, as “40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max.” It’s clearly different from other chargers in the market, which would normally be labeled as their max power. I wonder why.

From the Apple official product image (with a bit of Photoshop), we are able to read exactly what’s written on the label. Here it says 15.0-20.0V/2.0A AVS with 3.0A DPS in parentheses.

While AVS is more of a USB PD standard term, which stands for Adjustable Voltage Supply, it matches the following 15.0-20.0V or 9.0-15.0V markings. DPS doesn’t seem to be a common or standard term. A brief Google search didn’t return many helpful results. Even AI couldn’t make much sense of it.

My assumption here is DPS could stand for Dynamic Power Supply (corresponding to the Dynamic Power Adapter name). While in this DPS mode, the charger will negotiate a proprietary protocol with the device to understand if it can support 60W, as well as how long it can support it, depending on other factors like temperature. This means the charger could also be capped at 40W if you are trying to charge non-Apple devices.

However, those are just my assumptions; let’s see how the actual tests will turn out.