We are gettng there.. Problem one is I will never have an I-phone.. I do, however, have assorted laptops.
IS your laptop capable of connecting to both 2.4 and 5GHz wi-fi nodes.. If not you must make sure your need to set your I-phone' hot spot to the proper band (likely 2.4Ghz) NOTE 5GHz and 5G are to entirely different things NOT related.
Also as I noted. SOME devices.. Like Raspberry Pi based computers. have a problem with SSID's that containd a comma Like John's Phone... Simplify your SSID to All Alpha-numeric like John12345