We're hard at work on getting the port to Android 16 done but there's a large amount of additional work we weren't expecting. It can be expected to take longer than our usual ports due to the conscription issue combined with this. It's not good, but we have to deal with it.
Discussion
Having our own devices meeting our hardware requirements (https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices) would reduce the time pressure to migrate to new releases and could be used to obtain early access ourselves. Based on talks with OEMs, paying for what we need will cost millions of dollars.
I was wondering what keeps snapdragon 8 devices from being ported? They seem to have all the required features and in the case of Sony they are even lockable.
There must be another way to get early access without building custom hardware?! This is insane...
As a satisfied GrapheneOS user, you have my backing 👍