by Koji » Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:37 am
I don't have an iphone to be sure, but I do know that the vita will not connect to a WiFi that's in AD-HOC mode. iPhone's default hotspot probably uses AD-HOC mode, as do most Android tethering apps.
I finally got my Android phone to work using a tether app that wasn't available on the market, and then spending 10 minutes messing around with options till I finally found a wifi driver in it that worked for my phone... and even then the connection is wonky at the best of times.
If you want to be sure whether your phone's wifi is ad-hoc or not, it's pretty easy to do if you have a PC or laptop with a wifi connection, simply look for it on your list of available connections, right click and select status/properties (depending if you're on windows/linux/MacOS/etc) and it should list it as either AD-HOC (bad) or infrastructure (good).
By the by, it's not only the Vita with this limitation. 3DS, Wii, and PS3 also have these same limitations.