Fairphone · FP3+
From 1.7 (Andro 11) to 1.8.1 (Andro 11) via “System updates”
1.8.1-r-2023 02 04 25 70 76-stable-FP3
Bought with /e/ preinstalled, no rooted-or-not-rooted changes ever
(not sure what the default is for preinstalled)
I did not notice a startup slowdown in Gallery, but today I started getting worse: Gallery crashes upon launch, perhaps because it tries to generate thumbnails.
Going through the File Manager and doing “Open with: Gallery” on any picture works, but launching the Gallery directly by itself briefly displays the “Timeline” screen title and instantly crashes.
Tried clearing its cache and even app data, and of course a couple of reboots, but no luck.
I haven’t seen anything anywhere about this issue, but perhaps that’s a more specific case of the lag issue?
Edit: Using Gallery to pick an attachment for a message from other apps (QKSMS for example) fails as well, kinda like in Feedback for v1.8 - #129 by ntp.
1.8.1 was my favorite /e/ version until I ran into this. 
I installed another image-viewing app as a replacement for now.