BlackBerry Torch wasn't being hailed as a direct threat to the iPhone.
Palm Pre was.
I worked closely with Palm at the time, and the Pre had visitors from Apple blanching when they visited the Palm pavilion at CES 2009. I watched several of their people look very worried during the demos.
After the demos, the tech press declared that webOS made iOS feel "old and dated."
AppleWorld went on attack almost immediately. Apple threatened to sue Palm (and Palm issued a release saying "bring it on, we have more patents than you do.") Then the Apple-friendly press corps started bashing on the device almost immediately, mocking features like multitasking and Exchange integration as "features that users don't care about." One of the big tech blogs spent more time trying to cut blocks of cheese with the edge of the keyboard than reviewing the phone (and actually claimed it was sharp enough to cut one's hand, a laughable falsehood).
Ironically, had Palm been ready to ship in January, they very well could have dethroned Apple. Instead, they waited several months before announcing pricing and availability (sound familiar? *coughNokiacough*) and the rest is history.
There's no reason to believe WP will receive a different reception if it proves to be threatening to the current incumbents the way the Pre was in 2009.