[rictic]

I think they hit the right compromise here. As you said you can give up and pass on the word. If you get the word early then it shows you the final drawing then moves on to the next turn.

Not allowing someone to skip to the final drawing when they do want to play but can't guess the answer yet is a feature, not a bug. It allows new strategies, like drawing a series of states to show a change. It also gives you a sense of the other person, it's a big part of the fun sense of communication that you get with the game.

A skip button, if added, would be widely used and make the game worse.