Recommended file / filetype for importing online data to SQLite database on Android device
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I use PHP to access my database and generate an XML file online.  My android app then gets that XML file, parses it, and inserts the data into a SQLite database.

This works just fine but is INSANELY slow.  We have an iOS app and an Android App both doing the same thing... the android app takes 7-10 seconds every time the user wants refreshed data,  while the iOS app only takes 2-3 seconds at most.

There aren't a lot of records - 30-50 on average.  There is a lot of content - some large articles, and each with 2-10 photos (I'm not downloading the photos - just importing their url, size...etc)

I followed an example on how to use Sax to import my XML (supposedly the fastest way).

**TLDR:**   
Is there a better way I can format my data to make it MUCH quicker than how I'm doing it now?  CSV?  Use PHP to generate SQLite Insert statements?  What is the "norm" and/or "best" for this?