If you are worried about shelling out money, remember that an iPhone 8 isn't $449, it's $449 minus whatever you sell it for in a year (probably not much less). And it's even less if you just buy it used or Apple refurbished in the first place.
The iPhone SE works fine but the screen size is too small for many apps that get scrunched up pretty badly. You’re using a screen size that a very small fraction of Apple users are still using, which means app developers don’t care to make it work nicely for you.
The camera is bad by modern standards, I can see a big difference even for small 4x6 prints, and Touch ID is the slower 1st generation. It's just really old hardware all around.
On the plus side, it has good battery life, a headphone jack, and it's still an iPhone running full iOS.