Actually we need twice as manager characters, but we would need a lot less in any given words. Even decided Capital and lower case were different letters not different ways to write the same letter we would still need more symbols.

However that wouldn't help either. As a Mid-westerner I pronounce "about" differently from someone from Boston (they do something like a-boat). We no longer can reform spelling unless we also reform pronunciation as well.

German or Spanish manage to have extremely divergent dialects while still having phonetic spelling of the standard written dialect.