Hackers have worked out how to unlock the latest iPhone firmware, 1.1.2, to allow handsets running it to operate on any GSM network. Yet confusion reigns - one popular unlocking app may have been updated 'unofficially'.

Firmware 1.1.2 was released this past Friday, just ahead of the UK and German iPhone launches. New European models being sold for use on the O2 UK and T-Mobile Germany networks come with 1.1.2 pre-installed.

Methods posted so far involve taking a 1.1.2 handset and downgrading the firmware to the previous version, 1.1.1. Opening 1.1.1 to accept third-party applications - a process called 'jailbreaking' - allows the handset's baseband software, currently at version 4.02.13_G, to be unlocked. Users can then re-upgrade to 1.1.2.

Separately, one group calling itself the iPhone Elite Dev Team released on Friday an app called AnySIM 1.2, designed, they claim, to unlock a jailbroken 1.1.2 handset, albeit only ones that have been upgraded - owners of factory-shipped 1.1.2 iPhones are warned not to apply the software. It doesn't work on UK iPhones, the team say.

Whatever, a day after the release of AnySIM 1.2, Netkas, an administrator on the Hackint0sh website - home to many of procedures for unlocking past iphone firmware releases - said: "Iphone dev team didn't make AnySim 1.2 for 1.1.2 firmware yet. So any AnySim 1.2 apps for now [are] not from iPhone dev team. So they may (or may not) make your iPhone bricked, beware."

The following day, the iPhone/iTouch Dev Team posted a graphical app that takes an iPhone that's been downgraded to 1.1.1 iPhone, jailbroke and upgraded to 1.1.2, then re-jailbreak it.

iPhone coder Erica Sadun's experiences with the process can be found here

Rival development teams FUDding it out to be first? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it's a sign how murky the world of iPhone unlocking has become, and we'd recommend waiting for a clearer picture to emerge before attempting these processes.