SLOW adding lots of <li> to a listview

SLOW adding lots of <li> to a listview

I'm trying to load several hundred items to a list and it's taking minutes  to display on the android.  Here's a snippet of code that show's what I'm doing.  What can I do to speed things up?  thanks in advance.

  1. for(var j in contact.phoneNumbers) {
                var number = contact.phoneNumbers[j];
                if (number.type == "mobile") {
                    list += '<li data-role="fieldcontain">';
                    list +=                 '<input type="checkbox" name="checkbox-1" class="custom" value="' + number.value + '"/>';
                    list +=                 '<label class="fullname" for="checkbox-1">' + contact.name.formatted + '</label>';
                    list += '</li>';       
                }
            }
        }
        $('#contactListView').html('').append(list);
        $('#contactListView').listview('refresh');