You seem to read "phonetic spelling" as using an alphabet that can encode any utterance in a reproducible way, like the International Phonetic Alphabet. I'd call that phonetic encoding, not phonetic spelling. One is explicitly language neutral, the other can be wildly language specific, but still very regular within the language specific ruleset. And those language specific rulesets usually come with a wide variety of "inofficial" variants used by regional dialects, most of which still being far more regular and internally consistent than the mess that is English.