Or is a tweak in its timing necessary to help the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 beat the next Apple iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in a race to nab consumers? 

It's a dance that has gone on for the better part of a decade now: Apple unveils a new iPhone sometime in September and usually releases it soon after that announcement -- but only after Samsung has already stolen the show at IFA Berlin with its latest Galaxy Note workhorse phablet, a couple of weeks before.

Things are changing. According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) via Engadget, citing anonymous source "familiar" with Samsung's plans, the Korean electronics giant will move its Galaxy Note 5 announcement and launch plans up, as many as a few weeks earlier than usual.

According to the purported new schedule, Samsung will launch the Galaxy Note 5 in mid-August during an event it will hold somewhere in the U.S. in order to get a "slice of Apple's pie," as the WSJ report's headline suggests.

The news undoubtedly has Samsung fans excited to get a look at the newest tablet/phone hybrid as soon as possible.

The problem is the Galaxy Note -- and for that matter, the market for powerful smartphones with a five-and-a half-inch (or larger) screen -- never used to be a "pie" that Apple had any business in.

With the iPhone 6 Plus, and the impending update to that model purportedly coming this year (known currently either as the iPhone 7 Plus or the mush-mouth moniker, iPhone 6s Plus), Samsung may be losing its grip on big smartphones. Then again, they've always been hard to hold onto anyway.

The Apple iPhone 6 Plus beat Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 last year, even though that phablet was a big improvement on the Galaxy Note 3, if still only meant for a select audience of power users. Now it seems Samsung is losing its confidence about the presumed heir to the current flagship, the Galaxy Note 5.

But perhaps the outcome of that particular year's matchup wasn't so surprising and shouldn't be seen as a sign that Samsung can't compete in phablets anymore.

After all, last year was the first time Apple offered any iPhone with a screen size above four inches, and Apple fans (and "Apple defaults," the legacy customers that can't or don't want to learn Android) absolutely ate it up.

But will those buyers return after only one year -- half the standard prepaid wireless contract that undoubtedly a lot of Apple defaults are on -- to buy another big iPhone?

Will the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have enough new features to attract new phablet buyers? Could Apple even make some long-time phablet users drop their styluses, turning away from their Galaxy Notes, from Samsung and from Android?

That would be something worth Samsung's anxiety, but it doesn't seem likely.

Maybe Samsung just wants to get out from the grips of Apple's hype machine, a media-attention behemoth that's in full swing by the time kids are returning to school and doesn't stop until they're off again for Thanksgiving.