Lenovo has turned a new page with its Thinkpad line of notebooks by announcing the new ThinkPad T431 that features no less than 26 design changes that should mark a new era in Thinkpad history.

According to Lenovo, the new Thinkpad comes as a result of an 18-month research and developement process that resulted in 26 major design changes, but it still retains the recognizable look and feel of a good old Thinkpad. Despite the fact that it fits all the Ultrabook parameters, Lenovo wanted to make sure that it is still a rugged and durable Thinkpad that meets the mil-SPEC 8 standard.

Built around a 14-inch 1600x900 matte display with 250 nits of brightnes and the thinnest bezel on any T-series Thinkpad so far, the new Thinkpad T431 ended up with 331x226x20.6mm (13.03x8.89x0.8-inches) dimensions and 1.63kg (3.6-pounds) weight. The rest of the specs include up to 3.3GHz clocked Intel Core i7-3687U CPU, Intel HD graphics, up to 12GB of RAM, up to 1TB of HDD space or SSD option, 720p webcamera, optional backlit keyboard, WiFi, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet and WWAN connectivity options, VGA output, card reader, two USB 3.0 ports and bunch of other expected features including a 47WHr (3-cell) sealed battery.

In addition to a slimmer and more clean design and thinnest bezel so far, the main design change is with the touchpad as the standard and quite recognizable Thinkpad touchpad has been replaced with a new button-less version developed by Lenovo and Synaptics. As you can see it does not feature any buttons, it is quite larger and supports up to 20 different gestures.

The new Thinkpad T431 will be available with either Windows 7 or Windows 8 OS and Lenovo already hinted that we might see versions with a touchscreen in a near future. It will be available as of April with a starting price of US $949.