Eq this is not correct. Well, I don't think so anway. It would be possible to get the same vert count as the flat shaded example by making each triangle it's own uv island but I don't think I've ever seen someone do that accidently, where as I have come across lots of examples of people unnecessarily flat shading models, a…
In the original poster example every single face is flat shaded, "smoothing group" is a max specific term, without a smoothing group applied everything is flat shaded. When triangles are exported to game with 'flat shading' it is essentially giving each triangle unique vertices. It's the same as breaking them up manually…