I've considered using mine as a camera for a fixed install before, but the battery swelling thing is kinda scary. Doesn't help that a lot of modern phones don't seem to work without a battery installed, and that they often use ribbon connectors or other awkward setups internally. (so no just soldering a fixed power adapter to some pins)
Does anybody happen to know a software way of limiting charge to, say, 50%? I'm wondering if that'd help, as you'd at least be keeping the battery outside of the range where it's hardest to shove more power into it.
...that's a thought. Now I'm wondering if I could scavenge a smart power plug/strip somewhere and do a bit of programming to automate things that way. A project for later, maybe -- ended up picking up a few old webcams and they're doing the job so far.