Gentle Friends,
A few 'first reactions' and thoughts. First, the oven is different. It's now soldered in. The PCB with the cable connector is gone, but the bosses remain to mount it (same over part, different assembly). The leads are now Teflon insulated all the way to the main PCB.
It does seem to heat faster, but uses the same power over all so 'something's not right there' yet. Perhaps tapping into the temperature sensor will tell something? Based on cold current draw the heater is also less powerful, meaning it should heat slower..... Down by maybe 25%? More to look into.
The heating is handled much differently I think. For openers when the light goes out again, the heater isn't off as in the original, it drops in current from 1.39 Amps down to about .60 Amps. Heat is being delivered even though the step lights and 'heat' LED don't indicate it. This links with the different power heater I think in that now part of the heat for each cycle can come from the 'off' time (they just don't indicate it). This explains the erratic nature of the heat LED I think. It says off much longer than the old style at the same setting and cycles on for shorter times, sometimes only flickering a bit (because part of the total is 'off the books').
To the main point, yes the battery is being 'worked'. Not as extremely as it might be (part of the reason for the partially on still heater off part) but the charger can only safely supply 1 Amp still so when the heater is off (by the indicator) the battery charges at about .30 Amps (basically what's left of the 1.0 Amps). Even though I'm running it on a 6 Amp source. When the heater kicks in the battery goes from charging to discharging to supply the 'missing' power, .52 Amps the other way.
And to confirm what has been said, without the battery it goes a little nuts trying to charge the battery that's not there, but eventually drops into 'pure PA mode' and runs completely on the old style PA.
I'm not sure what all this means yet, but now you know as much as me.
OF