This study presents a proposal for space-saving design of built-in antennas for handset terminals based on the concept of requisite design antenna volume. By investigating the relation between antenna input characteristic and electric near-field around the antenna element and surrounding components inside the terminal, and then evaluating the requisite design antenna volume, we propose the most effective deployment for both the antenna and surrounding components. The results show that our simple proposal can help reduced, by about 17% and 31.75%, the space that the antenna element actually requires at least for stable operation inside the terminal, in the single-band designs for the cellular 2GHz band (1920-2170MHz) and 800MHz band (830-880MHz), respectively. In the dual-band design, we verify that it can reduce, the antenna space by about 35.18%, and completely cover the two above cellular bands with good antenna performance.