Tether iPad 2 to iPhone 4 with personal Hotspot?

[darkside flow]

Ok, I feel like I'm in the twilight zone here. I'm wondering if anybody can try and shed some light on this.

- Bought iPad 2 yesterday and connected it to iPhone's Hotspot and it worked the very first time, just testing it. It showed WIFI icon on the iPad when connected to the Hotspot. I have a tethering plan with Hotspot access so it's all legit.

- From that point forward every time I try to connect I would get a different icon on the iPad that is two ovals linked. Despite being connected to the Hotspot, iPad would say it is not connected to the Internet.

- Search around the net and find conflicting reports saying it can be done but then some reports say Apple has disabled the iPad from connecting to iPhone hotspots.

- Finally break down and call AppleCare today to get some answers. Scheduled a callback. But as soon as I do, I tried flipping to airplane mode and then try to connect to the Hotspot.. And it worked! I'm typing this from my iPad connected to iPhone 4.

- Here is where it gets weird: AppleCare calls me and informs me that I absolutely cannot connect an iPad to an iPhone using personal Hotspot. He suggested I could connect them using bluetooth but I'm not sure if he meant that would share the Internet connection. Right now I'm connected to the wifi Hotspot.


So what have others experienced? Does the icon with the two ovals linked just indicated two iOS devices connected? Can't find any mention of it in the legend in the iPad user guide. But overall I need to know if it's anomaly that I finally got them connected or if AppleCare just had their head up their rear end. I'm personally thinking that activating airplane mode cleared some network settings that allowed the flow of Internet from iPhone to iPad.

 

[Zcott]

Yes, the two ovals linked means it's connected over Personal Hotspot. It works fine to connect over wifi or bluetooth, but apparently bluetooth uses less battery.

I do this on an almost daily basis, so I know it works.

 

[fireman13]

Yeah, this happens to me all the time. It's quite annoying actually and I hope it will be fixed in a future update. What I have to do is turn my personal hot spot off then turn the phone off and back on. This usually resets it and the iPad will connect with no problem.

 

[darkside flow]

Thank you for the responses. I was almost considering returning it if I couldnt use it with the Hotspot.

I've found the Hotspot feature is really flaky so it's no surprise that it's been trouble connecting. Once it's connected properly though it's nice and stable.

Gonna try bluetooth to see if I can reduce drain on the iphone's battery.

Just wonder how an AppleCare specialist could be so adamant that this could not be done.

 

[kilidar]

I just been to Spain with my girlfriend for a week, between us we had a 3GS, IPAD1, IPAD2 and an Iphone4.
Got a Vodafone es pay as you go sim card, put 25 euro on it, stuck it in ip4, used 19 euro for a one week unlimited data bundle, turned on personal hotspot and connected the other 3 devices.
Wi-Fi Hotspot was on almost 247 as tunein radio was running on one device or another 247, Skype running 247. I dint take time off work and was monitoring work email from the beach by connecting to work laptop at home via rdp from Ipad2. We both used internet normally and occasionally gave a friend internet access when remote.
I had got the IP4 2 days before going to Spain from UK, I have observed the following:
-The ip4 can last almost 6 hours hot-spoting without charging it
-The ip4 will fully recharge while hot-spotting in about 2 hours.
-The ip4's data usage did not come out of the 19 euro unlimited bundle, it used credit, the bundle only applied to tethered data, so I stopped using the Ip4 for anything data (Skype went ipad2)
-Constantly got 2 mbits/s down and 1.5 up on Vodafone es, the only place where 3G dint work is on the plane coming back when I took the snapshot of usage.
-When the hotspot is not used for a few minutes the ip4 will stop broadcasting, waking up the ip4 will let it broadcast again.
-Devices using the Wi-Fi hotspot for internet can see each other on the same LAN.