So if you want to remember how to spell "phone", you first have to remember "puh-hon-eh"? I'm not sure that'd be an improvement. How do you even make a phonetic word out of something like "rough"?

The problem will always be that that English has a lot more phonemes than it does letters, so a 1:1 mapping will never be possible. That said, I do think it would be a good idea to have a 1:1 correlation. Which is why everybody should just learn Esperanto instead.[1]

1: Joking.[2]

2: Well, mostly joking.