iPhone 17 pro max camera and photo album crashing

i had an iPhone 15 pro max which I hadn’t upgraded to ios26 yet.

i transferred my data to my new iPhone 17 pro max, instantly had issues with my camera and photo album.

i spoke to Apple in store and was told maybe a device issue and as I’ve only had it a day, request a replacement. Which started the process of swapping back to my iPhone 15, in doing so I upgraded to ios26.1 and with that transferred the issue over. I’m now experiencing the issue on my iPad which was fine until I changed over to the iPhone 17.

if anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear it please.

I have an appointment with the apple Genius Bar thursday and also have ordered a replacement 17 but if the issue persists, I’m not sure what to do.

for info: I have 5,100 photos in my photos app. With 146GB of space available on my iPhone 15.

the 17 I purchased was 1TB so space wasn’t a concern either.

my issues exactly broken down: take a photo in the camera - doesn’t appear in photos app when I swap between the apps.

take photo in camera - app freezes

take photo in camera - appears in the left hand side view, unable to share, delete or quick click into photo album.

screenshots - a mystery. Sometimes save, sometimes don’t. Unable to share at time of screenshot

sharing photos - if I click to send a photo in any app like message or WhatsApp, it freezes and I have to restart the app to even get the keyboard back to type.

in app (for example, Instagram) if I went to share post from photos, no photos show up.

settings - if I try to look at camera or photos settings at all (even for specific apps) the entire thing crashes

i will turn my phone on and off to sort the issue but sometimes that doesn’t even resolve it and the images I took are missing still.

Screen recording - will just go round like it’s saving but never saves and crashes my entire phone

im also finding my battery dying faster and everything is slower.

i have tried various things to resolve this (even upgraded my iCloud storage to 2TB). Would factory resetting my phone and setting it up from scratch work?

im just concerned im wasting my time doing so. I mean my iPad was fine ?? And since I transferred to the iPhone 17, it’s now across all my Apple devices.

im just not willing to turn off shared albums when I heavily rely on them for my memories.

thanks for any advice you can provide in advance. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this