OP here. I thought my question was simple enough but it grew into a life of it's own and got more entertaining but less helpful..
All I can say is "you get what you've paid for"... The same function works perfectly on my 1098 (and previous 848) within no more than 5 seconds after I turned on the ignition key so I can confirm that there is one such function in the newer Ducatis' dash. I do not care to know that there are other ways to tell ambient temperature or whether such function is needed or not needed on this bike or any bike.
My gripe is that one such function IS on this 696, it has not worked from Day One, and the dealer tech I spoke to said it is normal that it doesn't give out correct reading. This is not some new, high-tech function that Ducati just invented--it is a fairly low tech thing that's on ALL of my cars (oldest one being a 2002 Mercedes ML)! I would not have missed it if the 696 didn't come with that function but I'm annoyed that it has that function but it doesn't work. If Ducati put a function on the bike, it should expect that the majority of its customers would expect that function to work properly; otherwise Ducati should have just disabled that function completely. I suppose I should just keep telling myself that the 696 is the lowest in the Ducati lineup and that I should be glad most of the things on it still works, for now.
BTW, it's not in celsius.
