Summary In this present contemporary epoch, wireless communication appliances exemplified meteoric progression in technology. These systems entail an antenna in every strand of communication. Depending upon the recent expansions in generations, the antennas become more compact, lightweight, portable, wearable, cost‐effective, and conformal while maintaining essential performance characteristics like impedance bandwidth, efficiency, gain, SAR, etc. This review is envisioned to unveil state‐of‐art in conventional and unconventional antenna technologies in recent times and offers knowledge to readers about a large regime of antenna designs suitable for different wireless communication system applications like GSM, GPS, Wi‐Fi, WLAN, bluetooth, 4G, and 5G under a single head. It is unambiguously worth stating that recent 5G antenna designs will unleash new breaks in leapfrogging all outmoded blockades in developments. Intended wireless communication systems take in mobiles, laptops, smart wears, tablets, etc., while antenna technologies cover wearable models, conformal structures, MIMO configurations, microstrip and planar monopole antennas. This study draws attention towards multi‐band and wide‐band accomplishment techniques, SAR analysis, bending and twisting effects of conformal or wearable antennas, effect of human body and wireless appliances on antenna performance. As per the study, FCC set a standard value of SAR as equal or below to 1.6 W/kg for 1 g of body tissue. IEC standards regulated a limit on SAR value as 2 W/kg, which is average value over 10 g of body tissue. Also, envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) of below 0.05, diversity gain of less than 10 dB and a maximum channel capacity of 0.4 bit/s/Hz are necessary for MIMO systems.