I don't think there is any sense in pre-N in a phone. Bottleneck in most phones right now is their own performance rather than wireless speed.
One of my friends that has HTC hero says its max speed is 4 megabits/s. While N900/Nexus might have better hardware, they would hardly leverage from 50+ mgps wifi speeds.
So it's not a big loss at all. Everyone would be fine with G in their handhelds for couple of years from now.