A small-size coupled-fed planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) formed by feeding strip, shorted strip and parasitic strip for eight-band operation in the mobile phone is proposed and discussed. First coupling the feeding strip and shorted strip generates a lower frequency resonant mode and a wide upper band. Then a parasitic strip has been added and reasonably adjusted its shape, so that the antenna is fully covering the GSM850/900/GNSS/GSM1800/1900/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500 eight-band (VSWR <3). With a small size of 11 × 30 × 5 mm3, the proposed antenna can easily be printed on a corner of the circuit board without loading any lumped element and any special media material, ease of manufacturing. And the narrow-side width of the antenna is only 11 mm, which makes it conducive to the realization of mobile phone narrow-frame, in line with the current trend of narrow-frame for mobile phone. Detailed simulation, experimental results and parametric analysis are presented. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:1689–1693, 2016