Due to some problems I won't detail here, I'd like to reinstall iOS on my iPhone Xs and set it up as a new phone, rather than restoring from a backup. The problem is that I have 30+ GB of photos stored on it, and I can't find a way to back them up and then re-download them after the phone's been set up as new. The options I've looked into...
1. Pay for iCloud storage to back it up then restore from the cloud. I don't really want to have to do this. I've had no use for large iCloud storage before, and I feel like it's silly to pay for it for a one-off backup.
2. Transfer all the photos to the Photos app on a Mac, add them to an album, then sync that album to the setup-as-new phone. The problem here is that when you sync an album, the photos don't *really* exist on the phone. They're sort of cordoned off in their own little album section, and if you want to edit individual photos in any way, you have to make a "local" copy of them.
3. Mount a Windows file share in the Files app, and use the sharing sheet to copy all the photos to that Windows share. This had some promise, but when I tried doing my 3000+ photos/videos, only about 3/4 of them actually made it to the Windows share.
4. Airdrop to another iOS device. This is how I've done this for my past couple new phones, where I've set them up as new, then used Airdrop to transfer all the pictures from the old phone to the new one, in chunks of 100 or less. It's pretty tedious, but it worked.
Any other ideas? I feel like it shouldn't be this hard to transfer locally-stored photos to/from an iPhone.
1. Pay for iCloud storage to back it up then restore from the cloud. I don't really want to have to do this. I've had no use for large iCloud storage before, and I feel like it's silly to pay for it for a one-off backup.
2. Transfer all the photos to the Photos app on a Mac, add them to an album, then sync that album to the setup-as-new phone. The problem here is that when you sync an album, the photos don't *really* exist on the phone. They're sort of cordoned off in their own little album section, and if you want to edit individual photos in any way, you have to make a "local" copy of them.
3. Mount a Windows file share in the Files app, and use the sharing sheet to copy all the photos to that Windows share. This had some promise, but when I tried doing my 3000+ photos/videos, only about 3/4 of them actually made it to the Windows share.
4. Airdrop to another iOS device. This is how I've done this for my past couple new phones, where I've set them up as new, then used Airdrop to transfer all the pictures from the old phone to the new one, in chunks of 100 or less. It's pretty tedious, but it worked.
Any other ideas? I feel like it shouldn't be this hard to transfer locally-stored photos to/from an iPhone.