So I live alone and I don’t have a router. I have an iPhone 12 Pro Max and a Macbook Pro. I have unlimited data so whenever I use my laptop I just share my hotspot to it and it works seamlessly most of the time (sometimes it bugs out so I have to restart my phone). However, when my girlfriend came over and had to do some work for school her windows laptop wouldn’t connect to my hotspot. She then tried it with her own iPhone, and then it worked briefly but then stopped. Mine sometimes just didn’t show up, sometimes it did but didn’t work. Then, a week after that a friend of mine that has a windows laptop and an iPhone tried doing some work at school and she couldn’t get her laptop to connect to her iPhone either.

Now here’s the problem. I don’t ever watch television. If I want to watch a movie or a show I watch it online on my laptop, same with sports, so I never really felt the need for a TV in the traditional sense. However, it would sometimes be nice to be able to turn on a movie on a bigger screen, or play some music on it when my friends come over since I don’t have a sound system. Now, my apartment is equipped with a Samsung Smart TV, but it doesn’t have any TV antenna hookups at all, so without a router it’s basically completely useless. However, if I had a router, I could watch Netflix, or Youtube, or literally just go online using its apps. But, whenever I try to connect it to my hotspot, it doesn’t work. A friend of mine came over and tried it with his android phone and it worked. I’ve tried turning it on and off and all that, nothing seems to help. I thought of connecting it to my laptop and just watching stuff that way, but then I’d have to get an adapter cause it only has USB-C ports, and those adapters are kind of pricey. So basically, my question is: Does anyone have a similar experience or maybe knows a solution to the issue. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

TL;DR: I want to connect my Samsung Smart TV to my iPhone’s hotspot, but it doesn’t show up at all.