Agreed, you never use plugins to record, only to mix. If you record with them, you can't undo it. Plug-ins are purely for the mix / post-production.
And if the pre-amp/ mics are good, a laptop is perfectly fine for tracking excellent audio, I would not think twice - the data rate is minimal. The room is far more important than the computer it's tracked on. As for 96K? Why bother? It makes it way more cumbersome (at least 4 times the file size), but IMHO is pointless since no one can hear the difference. Except maybe dogs.
ADC ??
If you mean Analogue to Digital, then decent hardware to convert signal is essential, I was being lazy by saying 'pre-amp'. These days it's in the hardware interface. I have Apogee stuff, but it's not as good as its price suggests, failure over a pretty short use-time means I have moved on, I quite like a Focusrite and use Logic (and a little Mac mini, or laptop on the road). But yes, of course. I agree I wouldn't use a phone if I was expecting someone to add performance to an existing track. I mean: how?!