A very compact multiband internal antenna for handsets and tablets is presented. The proposed antenna is targeted to cover popular noncellular applications including GNSS, WiFi (IEEE 802.11a/b/g), and WiMax (Bands 3A/4/5). This work examines a new ceramic material suitable for the internal antenna design which gives a shorter guided wavelength and multiple resonances to achieve antenna size reduction, sufficient space utilization, and bandwidth increase. The occupied volume of the antenna radiator is only 12 × 4 × 3 mm3, approximately equal to 0.06λm × 0.02λm × 0.016λm (λm is the longest wavelength of the applications) so the antenna can be placed in the device flexibly. The proposed antenna should be the smallest antenna covering GNSS‐WiFi‐WiMax ever reported. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:169–175, 2014