Handhelds are easy to hide because they're small, a Switch is bigger than a normal sized tablet
I mean, yeah, you can put it in your bag but that's not the point here.
And women's pants have always had smaller or useless pockets.
My 3DS XL fits perfectly in my pocket
The tracker was the final water drop, before that, many people were already dropping it due to increasing numbers of news reporting the Pokemon GO-related thefts. The decrease in number of people in the streets with a phone in their hand was very noticeable.
Also, school may have had an effect for the northern hemisphere but in the south it obviously had no effect at all(in fact I'm willing to bet school actually helped its popularity here)
Faye could have brought a new gimmick with support staves, Rescue would have been pretty cool