I have been following this thread for a while now too. I am the sponsor and I applied for my husband in June 2017. Glad to see that they are working to finish up 2016 applicants soon.
For my fellow 2017 applicants, should we start a spreadsheet so we can all have a visual idea of the processing times and other info? They will be moving to 2017 applications soon and it will be very helpful for us to have a spreadsheet so we can have a better idea of actual processing times and what the trend is in terms of medical request, additional documents request etc since we have a completely different application package from the older applicants. Let me know what ya'll think and if anyone wants to set this up.