SummaryThe well‐known small‐gain and passivity approaches to robust control only make use of either the gain or the phase information of uncertainty in system design. This results in a limitation on the achievable control bandwidth in practical applications. To relax the limitations associated with these approaches, we explore the possibility of utilizing both the gain and the phase information of uncertainty in robust control design. In this paper, the modeling of uncertainty accounting for both gain and phase is discussed first. Then conditions for robust stability and robust performance (sensitivity and bandwidth) are derived respectively. These robustness conditions are described as phase or gain constraints on the nominal system in different frequency bands. Further, it is revealed, both theoretically and via a hard disk drive benchmark, that a much higher robust performance can be achieved by using the gain and phase information of uncertainty. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.