If you want a true SoC because it's tiny and cute? Try a TI Sitara (BeagleBone, etc). The new BeaglePlay is really nice for $98.

If you need a home automation/print server? Get a $40 used Xeon workstation on eBay.

I don't know much about RPI alternatives, but those seem to either cost a lot more (BeaglePlay) or they seem to be much larger and with worse power consumption (used Xeon workstation)?

Then you're stuck. If you want to wait for the cheap subsidized part then it might be a while. Maybe forever in the case of the original Broadcom SoC. Beaglebone Black is ~$50 if price is really the problem. What's your objective here?

ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 v1.1 is excellent. It's got multipurpose GPIO pins that can be used for input, output, ADC, touchscreen, etc., and it's got wi-fi and BLE. Easily programmed with the Arduino IDE. It's an MCU, not a single board computer. If you really need a Linux environment then Orange Pi has a lot of SBC models available. For those I use Armbian, which is optimized for SBC use.