I haven’t seem anyone respond in the way you’re complaining about.

There’s a long list of requirements, with a big one being hardware memory tagging.

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/325679/20260826/grapheneos-expands-motorola-better-snapdragon-radio-isolation-google-pixel.htm

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — the chip inside the 2026 Motorola Signature — introduced MTE support, but only in the Elite variant. The Foundation has characterized MTE in the non-Elite Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 as effectively broken for GrapheneOS’s purposes. This is why even Motorola’s current flagship lineup cannot qualify: the chip is close but the specific hardware feature GrapheneOS treats as non-negotiable is not reliably present across the Snapdragon lineup.

They didn’t specifically disregard budget phones. The budget phones just won’t have the hardware required to meet GrapheneOS requirements. They’ve states that as the next gen flagship hardware trickles down to the budget phones, there’ll be more options.

As if I needed another reason to be angry about the AI bubble.