Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

ghporter · Sep 14, 2008, 10:00 AM

So we went through the process of reading off, character by character, my 63 character WPA key and entering it on my friend's iPhone, but we couldn't get it to connect. This seems to have highlighted a few issues with networking iPhones.

First, there appears to be no way to copy/paste text on an iPhone. That's dumb, especially when it comes to network operation. Unless I'm missing something, and my friend who has delved the depths of his phone for weeks is also missing it, this looks like a major PITA when it comes to getting things like complex keys entered.

Second, since there also seems to be no way to keep visible a key while it's being entered, it seems to be impossible to be sure you entered the key correctly manually, so it's difficult/impossible to determine whether or not a connection problem is just a mistyped key or something else.

Finally, the phone just tells you that it failed to connect, not why. What is up with that? That's about as helpful as just saying "no."

I'd really appreciate any insight any of you who have successfully done any of the above things I have failed at might have.

abbaZaba · Sep 14, 2008, 12:42 PM

when you type a password in it displays the last character typed. check it this way to make sure you have entered it correctly.

ghporter · Sep 14, 2008, 05:48 PM

Thanks, but we tried that. My password is so complex that at several points, my friend had to change onscreen keyboard displays to get special characters and such, so there were several points where the character changed to a big dot while he was finding the right screen to enter the next character. Kind of hard to keep track that way...

abbaZaba · Sep 14, 2008, 06:06 PM

well then if you're absolutely sure that you've entered it correctly then the next logical step would be to not use such a complex key. 63 characters? try 20 just for simplicity's sake. if that still doesn't work then you've narrowed it down to either a hardware issue with the iPhone or the router. perhaps the iPhone has trouble with such extensively long keys. if it does then you are **** out of luck and can just report it in the Apple discussion boards and hope it gets attention.

are you reading the key off a handwritten note or a computer screen? are you sure you are not entering zeros instead of O's? if you've truly exhausted all possibilities then your only option is report it to apple.

abbaZaba · Sep 14, 2008, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Thanks, but we tried that. My password is so complex that at several points, my friend had to change onscreen keyboard displays to get special characters and such, so there were several points where the character changed to a big dot while he was finding the right screen to enter the next character. Kind of hard to keep track that way...

the "display-last-character-typed" feature still applies here. press the key, the character shows. go about changing your keyboard view to insert the next character and the previous character changes to a dot and the next character in succession is displayed in clear text. not really sure what I am missing here.

ghporter · Sep 14, 2008, 08:38 PM

It doesn't stay as a character long enough for us to confirm the last character was correct while my friend was looking for the way to enter the next (special) character. We're rather "deliberate" about this, because as I said the password is VERY random...

We're pretty sure we got it right, but it still didn't properly connect. Is it really trivial for everyone else to connect their iPhones to WPA networks with complex/long keys??