Anyone else have any insight on this? Is the LCD on the 8+ going to be obsolete before the 2 years of payments is up? For that matter will it be obsolete before 2019?
It depends how you define obsolete. The iPhone 8 will probably still get software updates and run most of the latest apps in two years' time. Smart phone technology doesn't move that fast any more, so it won't be too outdated in terms of features or specs. However it will still have the 16:9 screen which already looks old fashioned on an expensive phone. Even cheap phones now often have narrower screens.
Whether you care about that is up to you. 16:9 has advantages too, and 18:9 has disadvantages. For example, with an 18:9 screen you will be rotating the phone much more because landscape-format photos look tiny when the phone is vertical, and portrait-format photos look tiny when the phone is horizontal.
So yes, the iPhone 8 already looks old fashioned, and will probably look more old fashioned in two years' time. If you care about such things, bear in mind that most people can't tell the difference between an iPhone 8 and an iPhone 6 (from 2014), so the 8 is not much of a status symbol. However, from a practical perspective you might even prefer the 8. I guess it's a question of form versus function.