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> Can smartphones even be plugged directly into an Ethernet socket?

Yup. I've done this with my Nexus 5. You need a USB OTG cable and a USB Ethernet adapter. Dorkiest thing ever, walking around the apartment trailing an Ethernet cable, but page-loads were pretty snappy, all right...

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Neat. I should've guessed that there would be a USB adapter. Is it plug-and-play or does it require additional drivers?

I'm pretty sure it was plug-and-play. It's actually kind of cool how many USB peripherals Android natively supports -- keyboards, mice, flash drives, etc...

Of course; under the hood it's just Linux. Though Google has replaced most of the userspace drivers and stuff are still the same good old Linux ones.

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