A different kind of Safe-mode?

I was playing with some **Xposed** modules on Galaxy S4 Mini phone and then after applying some changes, it stopped booting and stuck on boot logo screen. So, I tried to boot it up again in safe mode **by holding Home menu during startup**, as I did to solve earlier problems, but had no luck this time! Still stuck on logo. Then after a little bit of googling found another boot option that can be activated **by pressing power button multiple times immediately after starting the phone** until it vibrates by your keypress. Fortunately, it helped a lot and i could boot up the system and deactivate the problematic module and the problem got solved. :) Before this, I knew only one way of starting Android in Safe mode, which was by holding Home button during boot until you see *Safe Mode* label on the edge of your screen and then all of your downloaded applications would be temporary deactivated. (Although, key combination may differ on other brands.) But, when I booted up using this life-saving way by pressing power button multiple times, * All of my apps were loaded normally * There was no sign of *Safe Mode* label * And thankfully, Xposed framework seemed to be disabled * Although, I still got all other functionalities and even root access What is this type of booting called? Is it some kind of Safe Mode? What Changes does it make to system/services/apps? Is it a feature of Xposed framework or is a part of Android itself? I've done a lot of searching but found nothing technically well-documented about it.