A16 should be compared with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Samsung and Qualcomm always play this release half year later with “better performance at cost of energy consumption” game.
I don't understand at all where you're coming from. Phones with a SM8450 (Snapdragon 8 gen 1) were available in January, 2022.
Phones with A16 were available in September 2022.
Phones with a SM8550 (Snapdragon 8 gen 2) were available in January, 2023.
You're saying it is unreasonable to compare the last two (4 months apart), and instead the valid comparison is between the first two (8 months apart). That doesn't seem fair.
You pretty much described the game's timeline, in order for a phone available in September, you have to compete all resources as everybody is competing for the holiday shopping season, the EVT/DVT probably are done latest in May otherwise you will see a major news piece says Apple is having difficulties doing ABC. However, if you push the release date to a few months later into early next year, all the resources along is available idle for you and naturally more buffer everywhere.
Samsung/Qualcomm used to do the "June release / Sep available" model about 10 - 12 years ago, they always lose to Apple from every aspect. So instead of directly compete with the "in cycle" release for the holiday season, they made the release looks earlier in the year, but then compete with a product released last year for the holiday season.
Holiday sales are big, they're not bigger than the rest of the year. Samsung were targeting Mobile World Congress in February for the main Galaxy line phones basically from the start (from Galaxy S2).
I was a bit dubious about the benchmarks posted earlier in the thread, for the last decade we're used to Apple having such a long lead that timing didn't matter. But given how hard you're pushing this "it's unfair to compare the currently available phones" angle, I guess the benchmarks are legit and they really have lost the lead.