The seeds of Huawei's new phone operating system were sewn as many as seven years ago. The OS - rumoured to be called HongMeng OS or Ark OS - will debut on the Mate 30 series due in October.
The new details surrounding come courtesy of a new report from the South China Morning Post (SCMP). It carries details of a closed-doors strategy meeting that took place the best part of a decade ago.
The meeting took place way before Huawei was a global player in the smartphone market (it was already a global player in network tech) but it took place with one intention - to work out how to reduce the company's reliance on Google's Android to prepare for any US actions such as the ban we're now seeing.
Huawei has always been clear it would rather use the standard operating systems from Google and Microsoft, but it seems that it's had a backup plan for its handsets for some time.
The SCMP source says the documents relating to the meeting became restricted last year, but a team had already been long-established inside a room with restricted access within Huawei's development labs.
According to people close to the project, the OS will be completely compatible with Android so it should be easy for developers to port across apps.
Separately The Verge reports some good news for Huawei - Microsoft has reinstated Huawei laptops to the Microsoft Store. However, the reinstatement only appears to be for "existing inventory" - in other words, the company doesn't necessarily plan to sell any more Huawei laptops after it runs out of stock.
With PC laptops being so reliant on tech from Intel and Microsoft Windows, it's difficult to see how Huawei can keep making these devices with a ban in place.