Yes and no. ‘Yes’ because in viewport it’s indeed just a standard OpenGL smooth (Gouraud) shading. ‘No’ because you still need to specify whether (parts of) your model is (are) smooth-shaded or flat-shaded, because render engine will respect that and use corresponding normals to perform its magic. (edit: at least when Blender Render and Cycles are considered, I’m not sure about external engines).
Smooth/Flat buttons in object mode apply the shading to the whole object. Partial shading is done in edit mode: select the faces you want to change shading on, W -> Shade Smooth or Shade Flat.
I am sorry RickyBlender, but you seem to be not paying attention to the discussion. ‘Shade Smooth’ and ‘Shade Flat’ do not change any positions for any vertices. They only flag the faces to be displayed/rendered using (interpolated) vertex normals or “flat” face normals, nothing more.