I phone not being recognized as device

[RiMahan]

 Using a 5 year old Toshiba laptop and after loading pictures from my iphone5s last week, tried today and nothing happens.  Checked in devices and it doesn't show up, tried installing and nothing happens.  Is this a phone issue or a computer problem.  I'm currently on vacation and would really like to take more photos but not if I can't do something with them.  Thanks!

[DaveLembke]

Im your phone has ability to add a SDCard that might be one way to use phone to take pictures and then remove SDCard and insert it into SD card reader.

Sometimes its the USB cable, sometimes dirty usb contact, or could be phone issue or computer issue. SD Card would guarantee that the images can be removed and placed to a computer and then card formatted to empty it and then store say another 32GB of photos

[patio]

Many phones need their software app installed to a PC to work properly...

[camerongray]

I don't know enough about iPhones to comment on the exact issue with it connecting to your computer but I wouldn't let this stop you taking photos on your vacation.  Worst case you could upload the photos to a cloud service like iCloud or Photobucket from your phone and then download them onto your computer.