A mobile device such as a smart phone, tablet computer, Internet of things (loT) device, and/or wearable device includes a sensor module (230) coupled to multiple corresponding sensors (302, 432, 304, 434, 306, 436). The multiple corresponding sensors include multiple instances of the same type of motion sensor in different physical locations on the mobile device. The sensor module includes a software architecture/algorithm that can configure the multiple corresponding sensors to provide sensor measurements having a higher sampling frequency and/or an improved accuracy. In addition, the sensor module may provide sensor measurements having additional degrees of freedom and/or lower power consumption than can be provided by existing sensor modules. In one example, the multiple corresponding sensors include multiple accelerometers that operate at relatively low power to provide linear acceleration samples the sensor module processes the multiple linear acceleration samples to generate a measure of angular acceleration used to activate the mobile device.