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.
After doing some more research specially on Xposed itself, found out this way of booting is a fail-safe option to disable Xposed Framework at boot time which seems to be a feature of the framework itself and have nothing to do with Android core. As mentioned in this thread:


  Xposed for the most part is STABLE and SAFE. However, installing an
  experimental module or an old module can cause a boot-loop. If this
  occurs, there is a fail-safe switch to disable Xposed and exit the
  boot-loop. To disable Xposed, tap one of the hardware buttons (the
  Power button or a Volume button) on your device, SEVERAL TIMES, during
  startup. This means that pressing the Volume Up button, for example,
  multiple times (during startup) will eventually disable Xposed and
  cause your device to boot.


It says to press ANY of hardware buttons several times, so i was pressing power button several times! That's it!

Note that you might need to reinstall the framework after disabling it using this method. Rebooting might not reload the framework again.