I had seen in the "coming soon" features that different options for studying the words would soon be available. For example, instead of being given 'sloppy pinyin' (no tones) and the English definition, one could either just have one or the other, making character study also more like vocabulary study. Is this something that's still expected to be available?

Yep, Nick has been working on it for quite a while, but it's still a ways off. Nick does a little more explaining over in this thread: http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=15788574&comments=17.