There have been rumors for months that Windows Phone 7 would up the power ante, debuting on devices with late-generation mobile processors running at speeds up to 1.5GHz.  But we now know this will not be the case, at least not with the first wave of Windows Phone 7 handsets.

Each of the nine Windows Phones officially confirmed by Microsoft yesterday is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC CPU running at 1GHz.  It is unclear whether the QSD8250 and QSD8650 processors used are Gen 1 (65nm)  or Gen 2 (45nm), but either way they’re well within the mainstream of what’s been in use since at least 2009.

From most reports, the existing 1GHz Snapdragon processors are producing more than satisfactory results with the new Windows Phone OS, and we look forward to putting the phones through their paces.  But it would have been nice to see some of the new, bleeding edge mobile processors in at least a few of the first crop of WP7 smartphones.

Oh well – there’s always 2011.