The people using laptops wouldn't leave them on longer than they would be otherwise, you'd just get the data from the one that happens to be on at the time, so they'd be "powered on regardless" for the same period of time they would be otherwise.
Moreover, the average mobile device spends something like eight hours a day (while the owner is asleep) connected to the charger where battery life is irrelevant. So give the network two modes, one where the device participates fully in the network and is a preferred source for data and one where it only registers what it has with another node and is then a provider of last resort for data not otherwise available elsewhere, and operate in one mode or the other depending on whether the device is running on battery.
Notice also that the amortized number of hits over the whole network is one per object per device, i.e. the average number of times a node has to upload each thing it downloads is only once. That doesn't take an insurmountable amount of battery even if you couldn't shift most of the load to the devices that are plugged in.
Moreover, the average mobile device spends something like eight hours a day (while the owner is asleep) connected to the charger where battery life is irrelevant. So give the network two modes, one where the device participates fully in the network and is a preferred source for data and one where it only registers what it has with another node and is then a provider of last resort for data not otherwise available elsewhere, and operate in one mode or the other depending on whether the device is running on battery.
Notice also that the amortized number of hits over the whole network is one per object per device, i.e. the average number of times a node has to upload each thing it downloads is only once. That doesn't take an insurmountable amount of battery even if you couldn't shift most of the load to the devices that are plugged in.