Touch-screen smartphones are great, but placing calls hasn't always been so easy. Telephones were once bulky, time-consuming and rare. Before the age of satellites, phones had to be joined by electrical wires.
Just how far communications have come is displayed in a new exhibition on the evolution of telephones in China over the past century. It's in Sheung Shui, but well worth the trip.
It showcases 66 old telephones and other telecommunication relics from the collections of the China Telecom Museum in Beijing and private Hong Kong collectors.
One of the highlights is a 19th century telegraph. The wood-and-iron machine was China's first ever.
Liu Pei, curator of the China Telecom Museum which provided many of the models on display, says before the spread of long-distance telephone services, telegrams were the only means to communicate. They were even used to seal business deals.
Yet trained technicians were needed to send and receive telegraph messages on the machines in Morse code. One tapped in messages at one end, another translated codes back into text at the other.