Fairphone uses the latest snapdragon. Unless qualcomm messed up, their processors do support and have supported secure element for a while. What you probably meant was a dedicated secure element chip. That's present on tensor but not on most other smartphones.
Fairphone uses Qualcomm snapdragon chips but they don't use chips made for mobile phones, it's chips for industrial use they buy, so the secure element might be missing. The reason is: they are supported for way longer which allows fairphone such long update periods. The shortlist of other phonemakers who can do the same are the ones who design their own chips: Google, Samsung, Apple.
Qualcomm does list this chip for enterprise grade use and updates for multiple years to come on android. The block diagram has a box labelled security. If the chip was as insecure as people claim, it couldn't be used for biometrics much, if at all.
Huh? GrapheneOS is not wasting time with features or supporting phones that are not secure to their standards (meaning basically impossible to hardware-crack, which is NOT everyones requirement)
Pixel 8 has full support from google until 2030. Know of any current phones going for under 800 bucks with anywhere near that support lifetime?
Also, the pixel 7a is supported until 2026 and is $500. Both prices are quite reasonable for a computing device you're going to carry around for at least the next three years.