gingerbread theme

Your friends' phone either has a wallpaper/theme downloaded, or it's a Froyo ROOTED phone that's been upgraded to Gingerbread (and still has root as a result). That's my guess.

 

Or it wasn't an HTC with Sense. All phone manufacturers and even carriers skin their phones differently. There is a lot of info missing from this question to answer properly.

do you know what kind of phone? Who their carrier is?

 

Probably a different theme installed. I have a mytouch4g, but have a few different launchers, which will change the overall appearence of the phone. That or like others said, they are rooted.