Nice idea but ill explain ways to get around that.  First you dont need to upload large pics, the picture viewer gives just as good clarity at 450x300 as it does 2250x3000.  What i am trying to say is that if you keep your pictures about postcard size (as long as you dont change the aspect ratio) then they will show just fine.  You dont need huge images to get a good looking picture.  So i would limit your pic size down to about 100k max, i have some really sharp images that are not any larger than 15k  

And they will upload quickly... 

Also remember that upload progress is just an estimate.  The reason for that is because the only way to know what a persons upload speed actually is, is to put a file on the persons computer and upload it and time it.  

Since most scripts dont want to do that because of either privacy/permission reasons (they would have to ask you for permission) they dont do it that way.   There are two sides of the coin here, the user side sending and the server side receiving, they are both different so you just have to pick one when coding.  How do we know when the image left the user if we dont have a file to test it with.  We can tell when the server gets the file but how long to process that file and save it we dont know exactly.  We have to wait until the php tells us its ready, and that can differ from machine to machine and config to config.

Have you ever noticed that even with youtube after you upload something there is another step it goes through to finish up.   I believe that is because even they cant do it perfectly and that extra time is spent finishing the process.  

So progress bars are nothing more than eye candy that take up recources, thats all they are.  

I hope that explains it... :)

Thanks Dave I didnt know that. The other day I tried to upload picture via phone 2.5mb. The reception was bad and it was really frustrated to look at this spinning wheel over and over again. At the end I had to give up.