The aircraft had the new AA bulkheads, carpets, and seat covers in Y with the red strip at the top of the seat. I will say that the leg-room on these birds is decent, and I wouldn't mind spending a little longer on them. I found the old US leather covers to be much more plush, however. The new AA covers seem to be much more firm…perhaps because they aren't broken in yet.
One thing that was odd was that the IFE was still very much from US. There were no AA video PA announcements (boarding, exit row, level off, etc…) and the FA's on the welcome screen were wearing the US uniform. Likewise, in the GPS, flight was identified as a US Airways flight AA1906
Yes, everything is exactly the same (even the seat cushions), just swapped out seat covers, carpeting and bulkhead covers. Nothing was refurbished including the IFE - however they might have updated the IFE software.
This is a little disappointing considering those birds are going to be in the fleet long term, but they felt putting a lipstick on a pig will suffice from a product standardization perspective. Some might opine that the actual standardization will take place when they launch the PE installation project for the A332, but the target completion is three years from now, which is a long time.