How to force a handshake for OTA updates

What is the difference between this and just calling Particle.disconnect + Particle.connect (which is what I’ve been doing). I’ve been looking for an alternative to Particle.disconnect + Particle.connect due to the fact that i run mine in SEMI_AUTOMATIC and Particle.connect comes with the blocking risk. Would calling Particle.publish here allow me to achieve the same thing without the blocking risk? Note, I have the SYSTEM_THREAD enabled.