On the battery issue. A place I used to work had iPads stuck on meeting room doors with a webapp for booking and displaying who'd booked meeting rooms. They were puffing batteries in 9-12 months of being plugged in 24x7.
I got a few cheap power point timers, and set them to only charge for 1 hour twice a day, and we didn't have a battery failure in the 3 years after that while I was still there.
(Totally agree with the rest of your comment too...)
I forget when, but in last ~3-5yrs, I've noticed iOS seems to handle this. If you leave a device plugged in for a long period you eventually getting a notification saying it's not gonna charge as much, and it caps the max battery to 80%.
Just wondering if your story is before or after that feature.
I got a few cheap power point timers, and set them to only charge for 1 hour twice a day, and we didn't have a battery failure in the 3 years after that while I was still there.
(Totally agree with the rest of your comment too...)