I generally treat my tablets and phones very well. I wouldn't trust a tablet, at scale, to last much beyond three years. By "at scale" that means, say, a replacement rate of less than 10%.
By contrast ACs are on the decadal scale.
Integrating a tablet can't work. It's a dumb idea from the outset.
Similar hardware can work. There are touchscreen UIs that do last for a long time, especially on an AC unit where they're not getting used all the time. But they aren't tablets. In particular I'd finger the lithium ion batteries optimized for tablet-style usage as something you don't put into a system you want to last about ten years. Most of my tablets "die" when the battery just becomes unusable.
And you probably want an LCD chosen for robustness rather than being the cheapest possible high resolution display... again, plenty of LCDs can last for a long time, but the trifecta of "high resolution", "cheap", and "lasts a long time" is asking an awful lot for a fleet of systems. ("Cheap" and "lasts a long time" is, by contrast, readily available; it just won't be pretty. But it'll work fine.) And by "high resolution" I don't mean "retina display", just anything suitable for a tablet. Ye Olde 640x480 is plenty for an AC display, even in monochrome.
You want something pretty, give it a way for a real app to access it on the network. Except don't bother, really, because there's no way you're going to maintain that for 10 years either.
By contrast ACs are on the decadal scale.
Integrating a tablet can't work. It's a dumb idea from the outset.
Similar hardware can work. There are touchscreen UIs that do last for a long time, especially on an AC unit where they're not getting used all the time. But they aren't tablets. In particular I'd finger the lithium ion batteries optimized for tablet-style usage as something you don't put into a system you want to last about ten years. Most of my tablets "die" when the battery just becomes unusable.
And you probably want an LCD chosen for robustness rather than being the cheapest possible high resolution display... again, plenty of LCDs can last for a long time, but the trifecta of "high resolution", "cheap", and "lasts a long time" is asking an awful lot for a fleet of systems. ("Cheap" and "lasts a long time" is, by contrast, readily available; it just won't be pretty. But it'll work fine.) And by "high resolution" I don't mean "retina display", just anything suitable for a tablet. Ye Olde 640x480 is plenty for an AC display, even in monochrome.
You want something pretty, give it a way for a real app to access it on the network. Except don't bother, really, because there's no way you're going to maintain that for 10 years either.