Why did iOS 11.0.1 delete a year worth of photos? I was really enjoying the smooth UI improvements in iOS 11.0.1, until I realized something: after the update, all my photos from October 2016 to the present are gone.

Today I tried the 11.0.2 update, optimistic after reading a note that it fixes a problem where "some" photos may be "hidden" (haha on both counts--good joke, Apple!), but this did nothing--all these photos are deleted from my phone.

I did backup the phone a couple of months ago, which I try to do fairly regularly, and thus have most of the photos on my laptop, but still lost 2 months' worth of pics.

I can't imagine why Apple would allow an update like this into the wild. Do they not test for this scenario? Behind completely bricking someone's device, this has to be up there as one of the top things not to do when delivering a software upgrade.

Looking at free space on the device, it's about ~5.5GB now, whereas before it couldn't have been more than 1-2GB.

That space had to have been my photos, so it would seem like they're simply gone. 

Does anybody know if there's some trick setting or solution I need to use here?
Apple didn't delete the photos, it may have optimized your phone's storage to free up space for the update.

Those photos should still be on http://www.iCloud.com under your Apple ID account if everything in your iPhone's iCloud settings was setup properly.