.jpg background on <ion-content> drastically affects $state transitions

I have two different views which contain elements, and each one has a different .jpg background which covers the whole element (both .jpgs are about 50k). In a desktop browser, this doesn’t cause any issues. But unfortunately, on Android (haven’t yet tested iOS), this seems to have a considerable effect on the transition animation when using $state.go between the two views. In fact, some times it won’t animate at all; it’ll ‘hang’ for what would normally be the duration of the animation, and then the new view simply appears. If I remove the .jpg backgrounds, performance returns.

All my views HTML is inline in index.html, and I’m preloading all the images using this jQuery plugin: https://gist.github.com/mdellanoce/3581792

Are there any tips or tricks I’m missing to achieve fluid transitions between two views with background images?

Thanks so much in advance for any help you guys can offer, I would really really appreciate it.