For Android phones with a physical keyboard, the Gmail app allows you to select/copy text by holding the shift key and dragging over the text on the screen.
Also, you can long-press on a text field, which brings up a select/copy/paste menu. This seems to work across all Android apps, and presumably works on non-keyboard phones.
Great, but how does that allow me to copy text from someone else's email? Like a call in pin or something? If I click reply the quoted text does not show up in the text field.
Oh man, that's really bad. I rarely use the GMail app, so I hadn't run across this particular limitation yet.
I found a forum thread where someone found a sequence of interactions that work around the problem, but select/copy/paste really should be in the app's menu, like they are for the browser:
Summary: You can use Shift-S to activate select mode, then use the scroll ball to select. (On a keyboardless phone, hold "menu" until the soft keyboard comes up, then press Shift-S to activate select mode.)