Facebook today released an update to its iOS application that improves the speed of the app and includes a new feature for users to upload photos to an album.

The iOS update comes on the heels of an overhaul of the Android app earlier today with natively built features to make the app faster and easier to use. The company doesn’t try to release iOS and Android updates on the same day, but this is the second time in a row that apps have been ready to go at the same time. Facebook is working toward more regular release cycles so users can begin to expect more innovation and improvements.

Uploading photos to specific albums is a feature that first appeared in the standalone Camera app in August. Then last month Facebook took a number of features from Camera and put them into the main app, but album selection was left out. Today’s update brings parity to the experiences.

The other important part of the update was speed. Timeline has been completely rebuilt to run faster on iOS. As we pointed out in August when News Feed and photo browsing got an update, Timeline still lagged. The company is continuing to optimize speed across platforms since the more easily users can switch between sections of the app, pull up photos, load comments, check notifications and take other actions, the more they’ll use the app to engage with content, friends and ,of course, ads.

Facebook for iOS 5.3 is available here.