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Well, Telegram is rumoured to cooperate with authorities in most countries (and is a juicier/more likely target for the ones in mine), and I don't know how the number hiding works internally and wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a "the official client won't render it but it's there in memory"/"no phone number is there but there is a unique user ID that it is trivial to link to the phone number" thing. Also, if I recall correctly, Telegram gives you one globally consistent alias, and the number of real-life contacts I have on it necessitates that this hint at my real name.
I haven't seen anything I regard as solid for Telegram corporate providing significant special access to any authorities. There are a few articles with vague implications, but no actual results that would require such access. Most actual results I've seen seem to be from the authorities confiscating somebody's device and getting into Telegram etc on it, which is a problem, but not a Telegram problem.
A bit conspiratorial, but I have a feeling that the legacy media enjoys writing articles implying such things for Telegram specifically because they don't give any special access to anybody. They want people to believe they do and distrust them, so they use competitors such as Meta, Alphabet, etc which actually do give authorities the keys to the castle, who they don't write scary articles about.
It does do the unique username. I suppose if you already talk to a lot of IRL friends that expect it to be close to your real name it might be weird to need to join a bunch of super-anonymous groups. I guess you could create a new account, but I think it's tricky without a new phone number. I have written a few basic apps against it, as far as I can tell, the phone number truly isn't accessible if it's locked, but there is a unique integer user ID. But I'd stick with my point that's about the same anonymity level as any other platform.
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