Very nice! An interesting question is if it, like the 84+ Pocket, is unable to swap RAM into $4000-$7FFF via port $06. Unfortunately, I think that would be a yes. Can you test that? (It's pretty simple; I or various others could tell you how.) I take it that it has boot code version 1.03 and the OS is 2.55MP?
I really want to see this for myself. It's a change that just seems totally unjustifiable, for it seems that the money that TI paid to an engineer to make the change would be more than the money TI could ever hope to save.
Anyway, it's almost certainly the case that the SE and non-SE have completely identical PCBs, except for the flash chip. On the non-pocket models, the boot code has to inform the ASIC which model calculator you are so the ASIC knows which sectors to block writes/erases to.
There is no reason to believe that the change was intentional -- and in fact, initial indications are that the 84+SE Pocket does not have the same problem with swapping RAM pages that the 84+ Pocket.fr does. Perhaps it's also related to the model port...something worth trying on the 84+ Pocket.fr (changing it and seeing if the problem still exists, that is).