In a long-distance relationship? Here are 5 Valentine's Day apps to keep you connected

Valentine’s Day is a happy, romance filled day for most people, unless you belong to a right-wing party in India or are involved in a long distance relationship. The latter is an even worse prospect because you’re sitting in another city or a whole different time zone as your significant other.   But what’s technology if it can’t get you closer to people you love? If it can help you video chat with mommy dearest sitting a thousand miles apart from your college campus, it can surely come up with tailored ways to help couples staying apart stay connected with each others’ lives well.   So, if you’re dating someone who stays a thousand miles apart or even on the other side of the town, here are some apps you need this V-Day to get cozy with your love – virtually.   Avocado: Clearly the pick of thousands of couples the world over; Avocado is one of the most widely used couples’ apps on Android and iOS currently. The app thinks of pretty much all that you will need while trying to stay in touch with your beau and even planning meetings with him or her. You can privately chat from within the app, (goodbye, WhatsApp!) send images and schedule meetings and vacations with each other using a calendar.   [caption id=“attachment_218132” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Smart, snappy and feature-filled[/caption] Then come the really thoughtful features like the ability to send each other doodles, shared shopping lists that work equally well to write down things you need to carry to your vacation as well as new date ideas. You can send kisses to your boyfriend or girlfriend too, which essentially means you will have to kiss your phone and a kiss appears on their pictures. At least it’s something!   The app will also allow you to see a complete timeline of your love life, including the little messages and doodles you’ve shared with each other, for that cold, lonely night. Avocado has been optimised for tablets, making it nice and pretty to look at as well. Download Avocado for iOS and Android and get kissy-wissy with your partner.   Couple: Did someone talk about kissing? Couple here has a slightly mushy, but quite an innovative way to share a moment with your long distance love. It’s called a Thumb Kiss and it sounds like a slightly better option than kissing your phone screen. While you’re still chatting with your love, you can both place your thumbs on the screen at the same time to have your phone vibrate slightly and your thumbprints appear on the screen. Very “aww”.   Besides this, Couple mainly behaves like Avocado does, allowing combined lists, private chatting and image sharing from within the app. Couple also allows you to place calls from within the app, saving you the effort of exiting and firing up the dialer when you feel the need of taking the chat to a call. You will also be able to find recommended places around you for a night out in town with your partner when he’s visiting.   [caption id=“attachment_218134” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Thumb Kiss makes us mushy[/caption] Couple also has some in-app paid features like mood sticker packs that you can purchase and will be provided for your significant other too. There’s also location sharing feature that we think could be quite useful, especially when your partner is some place where you’re unable to talk to him/her.   Download Couple for iOS and Android.   Between: While providing the ability to privately interact with each other, Between ensures that doing so is very beautiful. Between is by far one of the best looking couples’ private social network we’ve come across. The cutesy logos and the image rich style of stacking stories will have you glued with your partner.   Your homescreen will feature your partner’s city and the weather over there as well as some moments and pictures shared between you. There’s also a countdown timer that will let you tick the days and minutes off till his or her next visit, next Skype session and more.   [caption id=“attachment_218133” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  A beautiful looking app to feel closer[/caption] On Between, you can put up “moments” apart from images that will be stacked up nicely for you to view when you’re sitting home alone. You can grab Between for iOS and Android.   Skype and Google Hangout: Ah, good ol’ video chat! You may have the fancy apps to make you feel like you’re with each other, but there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that will warm the cockles of your heart than seeing your love on the screen, chatting with you.   Skype has been the choice of video chatting for lovers ever since external video cameras being stuck to the top of monitors became a vogue. Plain and simple video chatting along with messaging is the service’s forte and much loved because of it. You can use Skype not just on your desktop but smartphones too and chat wherever you are.   [caption id=“attachment_218165” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Watch videos “together”[/caption] Similarly, you can use Google’s recently upgraded Hangouts service on smartphones as well as desktop to make video chatting a lot less mundane. On the web version of hangouts, you can add your best friends in for a conference and even play games with add ons. Since it’s a Google product, the company has also added a YouTube based feature that couples seem to love. You can both watch the same shows, movies and videos sitting across continents on Hangouts. The video will work at the same speed for you both and if one of you feels the need to pause it, the video pauses for the other too. Romantic, eh?   Snapchat: Ahem! Who doesn’t want to see their significant other send them a picture of themselves at odd times of the day? Getting a photo message while you’re having a drab day at work simply cheers things up for you and it’s even better if the message disappears as suddenly as it came. Snapchat’s 10-second-only self destructive nature allows couples to experiment a lot with the kind of images that can be sent, if you know what we mean. The app even allows you to add witty and fun one liners as captions and send it across with pictures. What’s more is that you can send short video clips too.   [caption id=“attachment_218131” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Hmm! We wonder what a couple could use Snapchat for![/caption] Of course, it goes without saying that even while the pictures disappear, Snapchat has been at the centre of several privacy controversies lately, and you should exercise discretion while exchanging racy images.   You can get Snapchat for Android and iOS from app stores.   Which apps do you use to stay in touch with your long distance love? Let us know in the comments section below.