@eeprofessor wrote:
My guess is that this has something to do with iCloud. Can anyone explain what? Does this mean that the lion’s share of my photos (gigabytes) are up in the cloud and the iXpand is fetching them down one-by-one?
correct, if most of your data is actually on iCloud the transfer speed will be directly related to the Internet connection speed as it must download the file first.
You can check how many pictures are actually stored locally on your iOS device by turning off iCloud photo library. Once it is turned off give it several mins to fully desync the connection and then look at the native photos app under albums. You should not see an album named camera roll instead of all photos. Her it should tell you how many pictures you have stored locally on the iOS device.
