You don't have to interact with the "community" part of it ever if you don't want to.
When using it to view images on reddit, RES loads images inline and you never see imgur at all.
The only time I see the site is when uploading images, and that's extremely slick and fast.
I think they originally only did this for direct images posted on Facebook etc (to avoid pissing off the core Redditors who post all the content), but lately pretty much all direct image links from my mobile Reddit client get redirected to an image page.
This redirection reminds me of other, less clean image hosting services. :/
Anyway, at the moment imgsafe.org seems to beat imgur on the qualities you listed.
Not sure if this is intentional on their part to drive ad views from tablet/mobile that they aren't able to monetize in the Optimized view, or if people are just aren't posting direct image links, but it sure is annoying.
And so is the dropdown for promoting their app, which is clearly trying to funnel Reddit and other traffic into their own social ecosystem.