No.  SmartConnect relies on DNS calls to distribute IP addresses.  If you use the host file on a client, you will always connect to the IP that is in the hosts file.  If you mount the service IP, you will always connect to the lowest logical node number (where the SmartConnect service runs).  If you use static hosts entries, it is up to you to manually balance the front-end.  If you have a small # of clients, that may work.  But as the # of clients increases, it becomes less practical which is why SmartConnect exists.  You can point your client's DNS client to the SmartConnect Service IP.  That will resolve properly.  However, it will only resolve the SmartConnect zone names so, for example, if you have a UNIX client that usually relies on its hosts file, you would make sure that it always checks the hosts file first, then fall back to DNS.  How this is done will depend on your flavor of UNIX, but many use a nsswitch.conf file to do this.  Windows may have its own way of doing this as well but I don't know that off the top of my head.
Hi all,  Instead of using DNS server for resolve SmartConnect zone name to service IP, can I use hosts file on client for this? if it can, please send to me doccuments for this content! thank for all!  Best Regards, 
Smartconnect zone name -> IP