IIRC, intel has pretty much dropped processor classification by clock frequency, because they realised it had no meaning. They now use 'code-names' (like Q8500), and frequencies are pretty much disregarded.
Remember that a 100MHz cpu that does twice as many ops per cycle (double bandwidth) is just as good as a 200MHz processor, just with lower overhead => lower consumption
I have a feeling the snapdragon is not 'modified' for the better, and they need to compensate by increasing clock.
I agree that advertising 1GB of ram is wrong and that marketing people should be shot. In fact, who's to say you don't have 10GB (by extending swap partition) ? However, i don't think that's much of a problem. I have just 1GB in my desktop, and it successfully runs a full fedora system with all the apps i can use, hardly ever filling up memory. And while slower than RAM, NAND memory is nevertheless much better than a slowpoke HDD