Qualcomm has their own system on chips (SOC) family named Snapdragon. Every Snapdragon SOC includes a CPU and a GPU.
Currently, their Snapdragon platform has 3 categories of SOCs available on the market: S1, S2 and S3, aiming at entry-level, mid-range and high-end devices respectively. All of Qualcomm's current SOCs are built on Qualcomm's proprietary CPU architecture called Scorpion (single-core Scorpion for S1, S2 and dual-core scorpion for S3).

In brief, Snapdragon is the name of Qualcomm's SOCs family and Scorpion is the architecture behind their current CPUs. You should know that the next generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets (S4) will use a new core architecture called Krait instead of Scorpion.

To answer your question more clearly:
A 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 refers to a SOC with a single-core Scorpion CPU and Adreno 205 GPU.
1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon can refer to any Snapdragon SOCs with a CPU running at 1GHz.
And lastly, 1GHz Scorpion CPU only means that the CPU inside a SOC is based on Qualcomm's Scorpion architecture and operates at 1GHz.

As such, they are not the same. And yes, you need to know all this in order to get the right phone for your purpose.
As Qualcomm has already clearly listed their SOCs in 3 categories (S1, S2 and S3), you can easily choose the right phone. For instance, the SOC you mentioned (MSM8255) is listed under Snapdragon S2 class (this SOC is found in the HTC Desire HD, Sony Xperia Arc), so it is a mid-range SOC. If you really want a phone for gaming, S3 devices will be more suitable (such as HTC Sensation, Evo 3d, Rezound, etc...).

I thought this phone is already in the market for quite some time until I stumble upon this thread! I was actually going to lay my cash on the Xperia P when the phone seller recommended this to me instead. Same internal spec and comes with a handy micro SD slot and most important, no need to cut sim. The camera's 5MP might be 3MP smaller than Xperia P but large MP is useless when the sensor is that small. Eventually, all photos will be resized to 800 x 600 or 1200 x <forgot> anyway.



Short review so far;

I only experience lag once, after I open Facebook. If didn't open FB, the whole phone runs fine. Therefore, I have to install Advanced Task Killer to kill FB everytime I finish browsing FB.

Music (the program itself) will keep on run in the background, and Advanced Task killer cant "Kill" it. Eating up RAM

speakers is kinda let down, and its "cracking" sound is even more apparent when you turn on the xLOUD feature...

camera is flawless, much better than my previous phone although both shares same MP. As mentioned earlier, sensor matters in a camera, not MP;

sample shots:



My last smartphone purchase was Motorola Milestone, which was 2 years ago. Therefore, this phone impressed me much in all aspects except for the speakers part, where the Milestone speakers is capable of producing clearer sound than the Xperia Neo L's.

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Added on July 18, 2012, 12:05 amBTW, what is ICS?

Oh wait, Ice Cream Sammich